This is a busy time of year for Hands Up for Trad. It used to be that everything started to ‘pile up’ around september time with Distil, BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Award, Scots Trad Music Awards, Scotland Sings all happening at once.
This year we have added the Big Song Relay (part of Commonwealth 2014), 4 Tinto Summer Schools, Distil Showcase and an array of smaller ideas that we are trying out. It’s all very exciting!
It feels great to be in a cultural environment where things like this are allowed to happen. Exciting projects are happening all over Scotland from some brilliant organisations who are supported by our lead arts organisation Creative Scotland.
It’s not good for everyone of course. Record companies and websites are having to re-evaluate as they strive to compete with the likes of iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and more big players. There are still not enough gigs for our home musicians – although I don’t know if there has been enough gigs – but there seems to be more opportunities to travel abroad. We all need to work out a way where commercial companies can survive and make money and we need to encourage people to come into the industry with new ideas to keep us moving forward.
If you have any suggestions or thoughts please get in touch and tell us as we are always on the lookout for new ideas!