Urban Music Studies

From the physical spaces in which music activity takes place, to the mythologizing of city-specific music scenes, the city has long played a vital role in the development and sustaining of music scenes. In recent years there has been a concerted effort to cultivate and nurture musical activity as a key driver for urban economic development and for city-specific tourism. Cities around the world are now looking to cultivate and support music activity in a bid to activate new forms of cultural and creative identity. This has occurred off the back of similar creative and cultural cities movements, and works to move beyond the mythologizing of particular cities music scenes in order to legitimise music as a place-specific cultural output which contributes significantly to local identities as well as to local economies. To this end, music is positioned as making a vital contribution to the cultural and economic fabric of a city, and is viewed as a critical way through which both locals and tourists can gauge, and engage with, a city’s cultural and creative identities. In order to foster this, an array of heritage and planning accords, live music regulation, tourism initiatives and even tax exemptions have been put in place, and an array of industry and government developed place-specific reports and activation ‘how-to’ manuals have been developed in order to understand the scope of place-specific music activity and the ways in which it can be cultivated and supported.

With a particular focus on heritage, planning, tourism and regulatory measures, we invite rigorous place-specific case studies exploring, both empirically and conceptually, the ways in which the music cities movement has emerged globally, yet is grounded in a variety of local urban, cultural and political contexts.

Proposals for chapters should consist of a title and an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with author name(s), bio (of no more than 150 words) affiliation, and e-mail address. It is envisage that published chapters will be 6,500 – 7,000 words in length. We have a very enthusiastic academic publisher interested in pursuing this collection with us.

Proposals should be e-mailed to musiccitiesbook@gmail.com by May 15, 2017.

Editors:

Dr. Christina Ballico (Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University)
Dr. Allan Watson (Department of Geography, Loughborough University)

More information: Website

P.S.: For getting some inspiration have a look on our Music City Volume published in 2014.

Not only Music and City, but also relevant in this context:

The Department of History, Sociology and Criminology, in conjunction with the Tourism and Events Research Group at the University of Westminster, are seeking papers for a two-day symposium on tourism and the night.

Since the 1990s a number of cities have promoted nightlife as a central component of their tourism strategy and have adopted cultural and economic policies to brand their cities as desirable places for night-time activities. This two-day symposium will address the following questions:

• What impact does tourism at night have on local communities? What opportunities and/or tensions arise between tourists and residents?
• How might tourism at night open up new forms of sociability, community, urban design, events and leisure?
• What alternative forms of nocturnal tourism are emerging alongside traditional nightlife activities?
• What is the relationship between night-time tourism and processes such as gentrification?
• How might policy makers better manage and develop night-time tourism strategies?
• What types of policies have been adopted in order to reduce potentially negative impacts and empower different social actors of the ‘nocturnal tourism city’?

This is an interdisciplinary conference and we welcome papers from a wide range of disciplines.

Please send abstracts of 300 words to Adam Eldridge on a.c.eldridge@westminster.ac.uk before 13 April 2017.

There is a small number of travel bursaries available for PhD and recent graduates. If you wish to apply for a bursary, please state so in your abstract.

More information: Conference Website