I Needed A Home

This Is Now My Home.

Welcome to Making Places Better, where every week, I will compile and share stories, policies, examples & best practices from all over the world that explore how we can use music and the wider creative economy to make places better. Along with my forthcoming book, I want to share everything I’ve learned. I want music and culture to be a priority economic sector everywhere. I want music and culture to solve problems in communities. I want to act.

Other than LinkedIn (where you can’t hide who you are), this is mainly where you will be able to find me from now on. I will share this via socials, but I will be focusing my time here.

Why? - Because music and culture makes places better.

Last year, Huntsville, Alabama was named the ‘Best City To Live In’, by U.S. News. This is due to a range of factors, including the quality of job opportunities on offer led by local employers, NASA and Redstone Arsenal. Culture played a significant role as well. In 2018, the Mayor of Huntsville commissioned a music audit, which the firm I co-founded, Sound Diplomacy, delivered. The audit produced an inventory of music and wider cultural assets along with a gap analysis, demonstrating a number of opportunities the city could pursue to better attract the workers it needed by investing in music and culture. One of those was a mid-sized outdoor music venue, so it could compete with neighbouring Nashville and Atlanta and stop its residents driving 90 minutes or more to see their favourite artists. In 2022, The Orion Amphitheater opened to critical acclaim. Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal lauded it as one of America’s best new venues. At the same time, the city hired a full-time Music Officer, established a Music Board and followed through on both policy and regulatory reforms the audit revealed. And now, for the first time, the city is the best place to live in the United States.

While Huntsville is an outlier, it is far from an anomaly. Dozens of cities in the United States have followed a similar path, from Tulsa to Des Moines, Fort Worth to New Orleans. Dozens of cities and places around the world have established frameworks that link music to wider economic and community development. France, Australia and Canada are leaders; as are the Nordics and select cities in Colombia. A dozen cities and places in the United Kingdom have recently followed suit (including Belfast who just put an additional £100,000 into music industry development) and there are more cities recognised as Cities of Music, either from UNESCO or other bodies as ever. The exception is becoming the rule. And this is just music.

However, there are over 4000 cities around the world with populations larger than 100,000. The UN predicts we are becoming increasingly urban, with 68% of us living in cities by 2050. Places will become busier, denser and more competitive. Music - and wider entertainment and culture - are not only a differentiator to attract the best and brightest, they are also an instrument to foster community cohesion and sustainable growth that faces up to the climate emergency. I want to show, rather than tell, how this is being done and how any community - no matter the size or location - and every organization within it - public or private - can use music and culture to their advantage. This is what I will be sharing, week in, week out. 

Making Places Better will be available to all for free.

This will never change. The core newsletter will comprise of a weekly dispatch featuring key developments from cities around the world. I will also highlight what I am calling agents of change - people and initiatives that deserve to be celebrated.

I am also offering a paid tier at $5/month or $50/year, where I will go into far greater detail and analysis by publishing a monthly round-up of advancements, initiatives and stories. You can try out the paid tier and can cancel anytime. I will also donate 25% of all paid subscriptions to the Center for Music Ecosystems and other charities. I will also offer group and student discounts, just get in touch.

The Book:

As earlier mentioned, I have a book on the way - This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better, out on September 12 on Repeater Books in the UK and via Random House distribution everywhere else. It is available for pre-order, by the way.

Welcome to the Making Places Better. Please subscribe. Here we go.