It’s often a bit boring reading endless list posts about ‘The best figs of 2012’ or ‘Top 10 songs i didn’t pay for this year’. It’s also stranger how a couple of weeks of cake, meat and booze, can send us leaping through time to a fictional new year. Where all kinds of new challenges await to test us, much like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap. As my good friend Adam pointed out last night though, if there has to be some planning and others are involved in the planning as well, then we have to accept the official techniques of recording time. Adopting these techniques, i will now attempt to inform you of what we achieved last year and what we plan to do in the future.
During 2012 we organised 26 events and gigs at various different spaces across Sheffield. Most notably though our own Audacious Space on Harwood Street. That’s at least one a week, putting on and paying fairly ninety six different bands and artists, from all over Europe and the UK. We didn’t manage this all alone, we worked with other incredible groups on a lot of these nights including Tye Die Tapes, Singing Knives, LaDIYfest as well as the wider Sheffield punk scene.
As well as providing a safe, free and anti consumption structure to socialising or enjoying live music and art, the space has also developed in ways we only could have dreamed since its begin just the year before last, with the addition of our permanent record distro, repairs workshop and by producing numerous amounts of new recorded material and new projects. We even managed to release a proper vinyl in the shape of Nope ‘Revision’ and got our own bands out on tours and gigs around the country, which was a great feeling to have back. As 2013 already gathers pace towards its second month though, we feel the urge to get on with laying out what we’ve got planned for the year ahead.
Firstly, we’re aiming to be fully registered as a non profit community group within the next few months. Not only will this be a great lesson in our members own personal organisation, but it should help lay the foundation stones for maintaining a larger, more inclusive music community space in Sheffield for years to come.
In house we plan to continue to develop the rooms we have. Tweaking and touching up, with the hope of providing a more functioning recording studio, as well as a place to hold small screenings of radical or independent films. Being able to have all these features on an easily rotated basis is the challenge with this one, but challenge is one of our favourite words. Along with ‘Waffy’ and ‘Skerrick’.
The first six months of the year should hopefully see a flood of new releases, with most if not all of the space bands sitting on some kind of recording or have ideas floating around waiting to be caught and hatched. Blood Sport recently went to Queens Ark to lay down tracks for an album. Both Amorous Dialogues and Trans/Human have a vault of stuff for Ben Hunter to weave his mixing magic with. Toucans have mumbled about putting out a tape of their stuff recorded in November, on there very own tape label. Not to mention Spandril’s ever massing back catalogue of free synth jams, that surely need an archive tape of sorts.
The main reason i’ve dragged you all this far down the page though is this. 2013 sees The Audacious Art Experiment hit ten years old, which we think calls for a celebration. There’s no telling exactly how this celebration will go off, but plans are underway for a Sheffield weekend in May of mind boggling DIY proportions. Featuring the best of bands from now, then and from the future.
Huge thanks go out to everyone who has taken an interest and contributed towards our experiment over these ten years and the last in particular. Lets hope the fuel lasts another lap at least. Onwards, ever onwards.
Tags: alternative, audacious space, diy, hardcore, independent music, indie, ladiyfest, noise, non profit, punk, radical, safe spaces, Sheffield, singing knives records, social center, social centre, The Audacious Art Experiment, tye die tapes, uk diy
