Urthboy: Syd Music Taskforce Should Lead The Way

The Live Music and Live Performance Taskforce assembled this morning for their inaugural meeting to discuss the upcoming six months in which the team of 11 music experts will prepare a draft action plan for the City of Sydney Council.

“Everyone involved feels very excited about this and keen to participate,” said Chairman of the Taskforce, John Wardle, whilst addressing the conference today.

Today's event was supported by musicians Diesel, Tin Sparrow and Tim Levinson, better known by his stage-name Urthboy. Levinson is hopeful that the Taskforce's efforts will have a trickle down effect, the hip hop performer noting that the City of Sydney is “a very influential council and it will be expected that other councils look to it as a leader.”

The Taskforce's action plan will address short, medium and long-term actions to flourish the Sydney live music scene, and will be delivered to the Council for consideration in July. Led by Lord Mayor Clover Moore and John Wardle, the Taskforce also includes members: Jonathan Zwartz, Dr Ianto Ware, Kerri Glasscock, Associate Professor Shane Homan, Dean Ormston, Dan Zilber, Dr Kate Shaw, Alex Masso, Paul Nicolaou and Frank Henry.

The primary focus of the Taskforce is to remove obstacles faced by live music venues and performers by creating initiatives that help venue owners manage noise control, reduce red tape to allow access into unused areas, and to provide an overall support system for performers, musicians and theatre groups.

As FBi Social is seen as a pinnacle venue in the live music scene of Kings Cross, newly appointed General Manager of Music at FBi Radio, Dan Zilber, made point of one of the pressing issues that he believes needs to be addressed.

“I think it's probably a lot of issues around the bureaucracy required for venues; all the hoops they've got to jump through, all the requirements they have. Sometimes they seem a little bit over-onerous. Obviously, there's a minimum amount of safety that needs to be done for punters and for the successful running of a venue, but I think the red tape at the moment is pretty unbelievable. Just the amount of work that needs to be done: the paperwork; the cost that's involved; and also just those venue owners and musicians even having an understanding of what it is they need to do.”

Zilber continues, “I think there's a lot of education that needs to be done so that the venue owners know what's available to them and how they can get through all of this heavy paperwork.”

Another pressing issue is the impact of noise on surrounding areas, due to growing residential areas close to live music venues. As Lord Mayor Clover Moore explains: “I would've thought conflict would be one [of the issues] because we have a growing residential population. The good thing about that is a lot of people are young and expect that in the city anyway – that there's going to be live music.”

“But a lot of our early 20th Century and 19th Century buildings weren't built to handle live music,” the Lord Mayor continues, “and so what needs to happen there? What can council do to help with that? We just want to have more opportunities for more people to be playing live music and for more people to be enjoying it.”

The outcomes of the Taskforce and action plan for greater-NSW were also outlined by the Lord Mayor. “It's been suggested that once we've got a policy, that we could then take that to the State Government and for that to be enacted in all Councils across the state. I think people in regional areas will need this more than Sydney.”