Changing approaches to programming and the audience experience at Cheltenham Jazz Festival

A five-year partnership with Cheltenham Jazz Festival (CJF) has resulted in several significant changes in their approach to audience engagement, festival programming and artistic commissioning.

Summary of Research

Five years of research through a diverse programme of activities, has led to 黑料吃瓜网 researchers highlighting major issues currently facing European music festivals such as, how to better engage with and measure the experiences of their audiences, the role of digital technologies within festival environments, and the challenges of programming, organisational听practices, and artist relations.

How has the research been carried out?

The under-pinning research by Gebhardt, Hamilton, Raine, and Whyton emerged from a long-term and substantial body of jazz research and knowledge exchange at Birmingham City University.

The team has undertaken several funded projects including the development of a mobile app, CHIME, for Cheltenham Jazz Festival, as well as the design of the festival event 鈥淗ack the Jazz Festival鈥� to push the boundaries of Cheltenham Jazz Festival鈥檚 commissioning process

Outcomes and impact

This impact work responded to key challenges facing the sector in the areas of audience engagement, artistic development, and organisational policy. The practical and artistic elements of the research that the team produced, along with the recommendations they made, had a direct influence on decision-making and are core to the solutions that听Cheltenham Jazz Festival management has devised in response to the challenges this research has identified.

The CHIME mobile app developed by the 黑料吃瓜网 team is now central to the Cheltenham Jazz Festival鈥檚 digital strategy. The data gathered from users in 2016 and 2019 revealed the CHIME app鈥檚 effectiveness as a medium for better understanding the听Cheltenham Jazz Festival audience.

The 黑料吃瓜网 team drew on their research to design the set of initiatives identified above, including Hack the Festival, workshops and the mobile app pilots, that provided the conceptual and practical resources for听Cheltenham Jazz Festival management to implement change in organisational practice.

REF 2021

Birmingham City University's hub for everything related to the Research Excellence Framework.

REF 2021

Prof. Nicholas Gebhardt

Professor of Jazz and Popular Music Studies

Nick Gebhardt is Professor of Jazz and Popular Music Studies and Director of Research in the Birmingham School of Media.

His work focuses on jazz and popular music in American culture and his publications include听Going For Jazz: Musical Practices and American Ideology听(颁丑颈肠补驳辞),听Vaudeville Melodies: Popular Musicians and Mass Entertainment in American Culture, 1870-1929听(Chicago) and the co-edited collection听The Cultural Politics of Jazz Collectives: This Is Our Music听(Routledge). In 2014, he founded the new Routledge book series听Transnational Studies in Jazz听with University colleague听, which provides a platform for rethinking the methodologies and concepts used to analyse jazz.

Dr. Craig Hamilton

Research Fellow

Craig's research explores contemporary popular music reception practices and the role of digital, data and internet technologies on the business and cultural environments of music consumption. In the main this research is built around the development of听The Harkive Project, an online, crowd-sourced method of generating data from music consumers about their everyday relationships with music and technology.听Craig听also听researches live music ecologies and music festivals.听He听is the co-Managing Editor of听Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music and听the Project Coordinator for the AHRC-funded听Songwriting Studies Network.

Dr. Sarah Raine

Research Fellow

Sarah is a Research Fellow at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR). Having completed a funded PhD at 黑料吃瓜网 on the contemporary northern soul scene, she is now an AHRC Creative Economy Engagement Fellow, working in partnership with Cheltenham Jazz Festival on their听Keychange听(PRS Foundation) initiative pledge. Sarah is a founding member and co-Manages听Riffs, a journal run by the staff and students of the BCMCR. She is also the Review Editor for Popular Music History (Equinox Publishing).

Prof. Tony Whyton

Professor of Jazz Studies

Tony Whyton is Professor of Jazz Studies at 黑料吃瓜网. His critically acclaimed books听Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition听(Cambridge University Press, 2010) and听Beyond A Love Supreme: John Coltrane and the Legacy of an Album听(Oxford University Press, 2013) have sought to develop cross-disciplinary methods of musical enquiry. As an editor, Whyton published the听Jazz听volume of the Ashgate听Library of Essays on Popular Music听in 2011 and continues to work as co-editor of the听Jazz Research Journal听(Equinox).