Launching Liverpool City Region Music Board's Black Music Action Group
I was really proud to be able to be part of the launch of the Black Music Action Group (BMAG) on behalf of Liverpool City Region Music Board.
As the chair of the BMAG subgroup, it is a huge step in the right direction towards creating equality and inclusion for black people working within the music sector in the Liverpool region.
Liverpool City Region Music Board hosted an event at the British Music Experience, to officially launch its sub-group, the Black Music Action Group and the Music Board’s recently published Black Lives Matter Manifesto. The event was part of ON RECORD 2021, a festival celebrating and exploring Black music across the city region, at a public event at the British Music Experience.
The Black Music Action Group is a collaboration of music industry professionals with a wealth of experience and a cross-section of skills and experience; who come together to redress imbalance and proactively create a sustainable and dynamic sector that supports black artists across all music genres.
A key component of this pivotal launch was the announcement of the ReMap project, which explores the challenges in establishing music careers experienced by Black musicians and industry practitioners living and working in the Liverpool City Region (LCR). A collaboration between ON RECORD and the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool (UoL).
On Record event curator, and lead on the LCR Black Music Action Group Yaw Owusu said: “The research seeks to address three key questions:
Why recent Black music initiatives have had no sizeable impact on the opportunities for LCR-based black music artists?
Why the Black music community remains underrepresented in the LCR’s wider music economy?
What can be done to increase parity between LCR-based emerging and established Black music artists and their equivalents from other demographics?”
Phase One of this project took the form of a short documentary film that can be watched here: