Mike Darby has been asked to speak on this panel at Unconvention, a great industry platform for www.bristolarchiverecords.com to be recognised and celebrated for its achievements to date

Check out the site for further details at  www.unconventionhub.org

Panel 1: Music, Heritage and Cities: Digital Archives (on a barge – Friday 1^st October, 10am)

Venue: The Barge

Led by Jez Collins – Birmingham City University

Popular music heritage is becoming an increasingly important marketing tool for cities as they seek to move away from their traditional manufacturing and industrial past. In Manchester there is the Manchester District Music Archive, Salford has the Quiffs, Riffs and Tiffs exhibition and the Salford Music Map, and Birmingham has the Birmingham Popular Music Archive and the Home of Metal project. In America cities such as New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago and others recognise the value of their musical heritage to aid cultural tourism and their global profile as ‘music cities’.

For citizens of these cities, recognising and celebrating their musical heritage is a way of expressing civic pride in their hometown. For many, music is one way of expressing and making meaning of their lives and the opportunity to share those memories and experiences via the projects mentioned above is evidently clear in the responses to the archives.

In this panel we discuss with some of the founders of the archives why digital archives are important and not simply a nostalgia trip, of what use they are for cities, why musicians and bands should know their history and find out some interesting facts you may not know!  Oh, and watch a film!!