TSN Centre

www.tsncentre.co.uk

2005-08-09T11:45:00.000Z

www.tsncentre.co.uk

check it out yo!

support your local scene.

up and running

2005-08-06T00:27:00.000Z

The TSN Centre website is now up and running.

It is one week until OOS

Someone wrote off my Mini today. I don't want to talk about it.

getting there

2005-08-04T08:48:00.000Z

Things are slowly starting to come together...

update...

2005-07-31T11:14:00.000Z

The website is nearing completion and just being tested. It looks smart as anything!

We have a logo. It will be officially unveiled shortly.

We are getting badges made

The Get Cape gig is in 9 days!!! Please come!!!

Progress is being made...

Does anyone read this?

things i learnt today...

2005-07-23T21:28:00.000Z

a brief update...

the website should be up and running shortly
gareth hasn't vanished off the face of the earth
3 bands in my top 5 albums of all time are american which is strange and unlike me
you can now contact me, if it's centre related, through jez@tsncentre.co.uk (classy!)
it's only 4 days until Owen and City on Film. yes yes yes yes yes!
tomorrow i will be advertising and promoting at satans hollow and subjecting myself to a night of grind.

jez's calendar for the week

sunday @ satan's
monday @ the phoenix
tuesday @ not sure yet
wednesday @ the phoenix
thursday @ the phoenix (TSN centre meeting)
friday @ sheffield

ALL GOOD!

the tasks for this week...

2005-07-19T17:38:00.000Z

both to remind myself and to those of you who think that all i'm doing is getting up in front of people and talking a good game!

1) Complete the aims and objectives, bullet pointed in under one side of A4

2) Meet with the web designer to dicuss the website

3) Register the website along with arranging e-mail addresses

4) Confirm the logo for the working part of the project

5) Finish arranging the gigs for the benefit week

6) Attempt to arrange (and probably fail) with Sir Howard Bernstein

7) Arrange a meeting with Tony Lloyd MP

8) Contact Carnival Radio in order to contact local hip hop and reggae promoters

9) Organise a meeting with the licensing section at the council to discuss how we could be an all ages venue and the necessary measures we would have to take.

10) Update the mailing list and send out information sheets and mail out no.1 to all the new people who have signed up

11) Design the information leaflet to be given out

12) Complete a full costings for the centre

13) Meet with the surveying team to discuss the information they require to search for a premises in order to find out the cost

14) Start writing the full research paper

*PHEW*

I'm sure there are many other things that are needed to be done too!

Now I don't want to moan...

2005-07-18T08:37:00.000Z

...but why exactly wouldn't you want to sign the mailing list and petition when you see me at gigs? I'm not just setting this centre up for myself, it's there to benefit the entire music watching community. The promoters work so hard and put in so much effort to get bands to play here and all you do is pay your entry money and think that's a big enough committment. Stop taking and start giving back to your local community!

The hunt for bands

2005-07-14T16:28:00.000Z

hmmm... the hunt for bands continues as the reality of not only organising the gigs for the tsn week but also between now and chrimbo sets in!

Frankie Stubbs

2005-07-13T15:09:00.000Z

I asked Frankie to play one of the TSN week shows but sadly he can't do it as he's away for the whole month of September and hasn't really got a fixed line up. Personally I'm gutted as I think having him play would have completed the week in tremendous style.

Back to the drawing board for the final night extravaganza!

New members of the team

2005-07-13T14:52:00.000Z

The TSN Centre staff are proud to announce that after a lengthy selection process ("do you want to do it?" "What does it pay?" "Nothing" "ok") that we now have press liasion officers and a web designery type person.

So, unveiling the brand new TSN Press Team;

Nick - Editor of A Short Fanzine About Rocking and contributor to Big Cheese magazine. Bearing a startling resemblence to Frodo, just being born well before 2268, he has a long list of connections in the music media. These are going to come in very handy at the point where we start the full on media assault.

Ruth - writer, contributor, gig-goer from Rock Midgets and also Virtual Festivals. She won't be receiving my sarcasm as a) she hasn't done anything to deserve it b) she's damn good at what she does.

And the all powerful TSN Web Team;

Carpet - He works for AwesomeDesigns.co.uk He's free and he's been known to put on gigs in Manchester as well as perform sound engineering duties. He used to have a beard but this now seems to have gone the way of Jon's mullet. Again, I miss the beard. I'm now left wondering why there can't be someone who has both a mullet and a beard. That would be supreme!

Why Funeral for a Friend Rule...

2005-07-09T07:54:00.000Z

Certain things in life you never think you'll say and until last night this was one of them. I hijakced Nick's interview with them in order to ask if they would help me promote the TSN Centre. At the end of the interview I spoke to both Kris and Matt about the idea. Not only were they genuinely interested in the idea and very, very supportive of it, but they were also asking questions about the set up, the long term aims and goals of the project.

Mid set Matt explained to the audience, mainly under 18's and ideal for who we're aiming at, about the centre and the mailing list. In fact, if you're reading this the chances are that you were at that gig! This is the real clincher though. Not only did he tell everyone about it, he also explained in detail why everyone should sign it. Outside of myself, I've never seen anyone talk about the centre in such a coherent and caring manner and the 150+ signatures that I ended up with from the night is proof of that.

Right now I cannot put into words how greatful I am to these guys for not only taking the time to listen to me but to also take on board what I was saying and then relay the message to 1800 people is beyond fantastic.

So once again, I'd like to say thank you to Matt, Kris and everyone who signed the mailing list for their support. With this continued effort we will get the funding for the centre!

Here's the flyer...

2005-07-07T21:24:00.000Z

Thanks!

2005-07-07T06:01:00.000Z

Just wanted to say thanks to all the promoters, bands, people who've signed up to the mailing list so far. The response from everyone has been truly overwhelming and positive. In the last 12 hours, since sending out the first mailing list, I've already had another 20 names joining it, 2 volunteers to do the web design, 1 volunteer to be the press liaison officer and several offers of help "as and when required".

Thank you so much for this fantastic support. With your continued positive encouragement we will get this off the ground!

The first mail out...

2005-07-06T16:06:00.000Z

TSN Centre mail out No.1

1. Introduction
2. Who are we?
3. Website
4. Gigs
5. Benefit Week
6. Situations Vacant

1) Introduction

Welcome to the first ever TSN Centre mailing list. You managed to turn up here either by signing the sheet at one of the local gigs or by being on my messenger list. If it's the latter, sorry but it's for a good cause. If you don’t know what the TSN Centre is all about, check the blog at http://tsncentre.blogspot.com The past few weeks has seen the TSN Centre progressing steadily towards the point where we both have the planning in place and also the support to approach the council. There has also been a marked increase in the TSN Centre presence at local gigs and over the next few weeks, when we have everything in place, there will be a huge increase in web presence as well. Your support is truly appreciated as the sleep deprivation sets in and if anyone feels that they can help out then that would be supreme. Tell everyone about the project and the website as there’s only one way to get this off the ground and that’s with continued support.

2) Who are we?

As this is the first mail out, I thought I'd do a short introduction to "the team" so to speak.

Jez - Having supported the Manchester scene for the past 10 years and been a regular (and generally annoying) face at gigs. Jez also has extensive knowledge of work in the community having spent the last 3 years working with the homeless, asylum seekers and also parents with young children.

Jon - Has been putting on gigs in the City Centre and also the "vocalist" in grindcore supremos Blackened Heart Syndrome. He works for the council and is responsible for the finances. His help has already been invaluable. He used to have a mullet, he cut it off for charity and we miss it.

Daniel - Daniel has been responsible for Manchestershows.cjb.net and putting on gigs here for the last year. He has steadily built up contacts in all areas of the alternative music scene within Manchester. He provides guitar and/or vocal duties in a number of bands including North Cross and Get Stuffed. He is currently on tour somewhere towards Japan with Funeral Diner and we're all jealous of him.

Gareth - A keen photographer, DJ and all round graphical hero. Generally getting all the art based tasks including design of the logo, making of the new flyers and promoting the centre to the student community.

3) Website

We now have a blog up and running at http://www.tsncentre.blogspot.com This is more a case of a diary than an official website but it's the first place that you will see the gigs advertised and get to read about how tired I am. It should be updated more than it currently is being (weekly) and we expect to start updating this every other day or as soon as we get any news through. It also has my contact details on there.

We are aiming to register tsncentre.co.uk or the equivalent over the next few weeks and have an official website with all the aims, objectives and professional information on it.

4) Gigs

We have now announced our first benefit gig. All profits from the night will be going towards getting the website off the ground and also getting some flyers printed advertising the centre.

Tuesday 9th August

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
Nathaniel Green
Dave House
Tellison
Portman

£5
Doors at 7pm
The Phoenix, Oxford Road, Manchester

**Special Offer**

As a thank you to everyone who has signed up to the mailing list and shown their early support, if you send an e-mail to Jezmyers@hotmail.com with your name on it then you can get in for a reduced price of £4. Of Course, with all the money going towards the centre, you're under no obligation to take this reduced rate of entry...

5) Benefit Week

Between the 18-22nd September we will be holding a series of VERY special gigs with all the profits going towards the research of the centre. We're busily contacting bands and finalising line ups and we hope to release details of these gigs by the end of the month. The only information I can release is that they will sell out (so get your tickets early) and they will all be priced at £5 entry.

6) Situations Vacant

Let's face it, we're pretty good at what we're doing so far but we're all a bit tired and we do have areas of weakness. Therefore we are looking for the following people to volunteer to help us out.

Experienced Web Designer - We have no website, we'd like one. If you're any good at this sort of thing and can design up to a decent standard (as we have to look like a professional group) please get in contact.

Press Liaison Officer - responsible for contacting the press and promoting the centre. Compiling mail outs and promoting awareness of the centre.

General Helpers - To assist with flyering and to build up awareness by getting the mailing list signed and promoted at local gigs.

If you can help out in anyway, please send an e-mail to jezmyers@hotmail.com

Thanks for reading!

Jez

If you don't want to hear anymore about this wonderful project, simply send an e-mail with "I don't care about this anymore" to jezmyers@hotmail.com

First gig announcement!

2005-07-02T10:20:00.000Z

As a warm up to the benefit week, the first TSN benefit gig will be held on the 9th August, details below;

TSN Centre Presents;

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
One man, one guitar, one laptop and one really bad southern accent.

Nathaniel Green (acoustic)
Keeping it old skool and you might even be able to convince them to play stuff off their first ep!

Dave House
Ex-Lucky Thirteen genius has now gone on tour without his backing band producing mellow goodness.

Tellison
If you liked Stapleton (and how could you not?) then you'll love these guys!

Tuesday 9th August @ The Phoenix on Oxford Road
£5 in
Doors at 7pm

Be there as any money made on the night goes towards the research costs!

Gathering speed...

2005-07-02T10:06:00.000Z

As Daniel tries to do his best and help from the far corners of the world (ok Germany!) meetings were held with Jon (cheif of finance) and also Gareth (general helper and part of the tsn gig team). The outcomes of the meetings are below;

Finance - We now have a rough and approximate idea of how much we need in terms of ongoing costs (rent/wages/materials) and we're working hard on finding out the costings for the basic materials though we hope to have the majority of these covered by grants. A few things cropped up in the discussion including the cost of National Insurance for the employer (not the employee) which pushes things up and also the cost of business rates if we're not registered as a charity.

Charitable status - I'm still unsure as to where I'm going with this. On one hand it makes sense to become a charity. On the other hand, I'm a control freak and don't want people working over me.

Research - e-mails have been sent out to various members of the council in order to gain support before we approach the higher ranks. The response has been positive with people pointing me in the right direction where they were unable to offer help themselves.

TSN Benefit week - most of the bands were contacted this week and you can expect an announcement of the first gigs in the next fortnight or so. We're all very excited about this, as you can imagine, and hopefully the money raised will cover nearly all of the research costs. The information I can reveal so far (well I could reveal more but I'm not going to) is that the gigs will all be held in the middle room of the phoenix with their new £15k sound and lighting system. All the gigs will be priced at £5 adv and tickets will be available (cash only) from Roadkill Records on Oldham Street. The only bands who we have contacted that can't play are A (in Japan), Send More Paramedics (on holiday) and Pylon (in Sweden) but the response from all of them is that they'll play at a later date.

More news coming as it filters through. As always, if you feel you can help with the planning drop me a line jezmyers@hotmail.com

Also, check out http://www.manchestershows.cjb.net

What's new this week?

2005-06-25T15:31:00.000Z

Struggling with grants application forms has always been a personal favourite pastime of mine so I didn't see why this week should differ from any other! Hopefully there'll be more exciting news on the grants front but in the meantime it's just a case of filling in application forms and crossing fingers.

The line ups for the TSN Centre benefit week are far from finished and I'm hoping for some sort of design intervention/inspiration or maybe just everyone to start replying to their e-mails!

Daniel has taken this opportunity to leave the country (and me in the lurch! - joke) as a few weeks in Europe followed by a couple of weeks in Japan with Funeral Diner presented itself. Hardly an opportunity to be sniffed at but it does mean that one half of the major gig organising team has vanished. Ho hum!

This morning should have seen a meeting with myself and Chief of Finance Jon but sadly what seems to have been an exploding CPU (can that even happen?) put paid to that idea. Rescheduling things for Monday evening with the exciting topics for discussion include "strategic promotion of the centre" and working out roughly how much we'll need to get the centre up and running.

Councillors and MP's - I'm going to work on gaining their support in the near future so expect much hilarity as we try to get a meeting with Tony Lloyd MP.

I don't think there's anything more to report until after the meeting on Monday but then I'll probably post this and then think of loads of things I've forgotten.

As always, if you want any more information or have any questions/ideas drop me a line.

So what's the plan?

2005-06-17T21:18:00.000Z

So here's what we're trying to do...

We are hoping to secure funding to open an educational and social inclusion centre. The theory behind the TSN Centre is to promote the arts within the Manchester Community.

The TSN Centre will essentially be divided into two sections. By day the centre will run art classes aimed at beginners. The courses will be short and aimed at giving people a “taster” of a new skill so that they can then, if they choose, be assisted in finding a longer based college course or equivalent.

Colleges currently run courses in, for example, sculpting, which run for one day per week for a year. These courses are great except for that fact that people don't know if they either like sculpting or are any good at it. By offering taster courses, 6 x 2 hour sessions in an art form, people are able to gain a greater understanding of what they enjoy or would like to learn. This will hopefully eliminate the rate of students dropping out from courses. The courses are going to be aimed at those who are socially excluded for whatever reason (homelessness, ex-offender, unemployed, parent with child in school) and aim to put them back on the educational ladder and to also build up social confidence. The courses we aim to run range from everything from pottery to breakdancing to street art to dj-ing. We want to make the courses hands on as possible and enjoyable.

In the evening the centre will showcase musicians both from Manchester and from outside. As well as having an in house promoter, the centre will also be able to be hired by external non-profit promoters in order to show a wider variety of artists including theatre and hopefully film.

Daniel has been putting on gigs in Manchester at the Phoenix for the past year, there are also several other non-profit promoters who face the issues below. Venue hire cost is prohibitive towards paying bands. When you have to pay out £150 to the venue and want to pay the bands too the costs start to spiral. People have to pay more to get into the gigs which makes them less appealing to attend and the venue keeps all of the bar takings. All the venues in Manchester are pretty much over 18's only which cuts out a lot of people from being able to see local bands and the fact that there is no way you can hire the venues on a Friday or Saturday night means that people who are over 18 and do work can't always make the gigs. By having our own venue the costs to hire would be very low and the bar profits would go back into the cost of running the centre. Don't even get me started on the "pay to play" promoters that are currently destroying the music scene.

During school holidays, the centre will operate to promote art based activities to school children. This will provide an enjoyable and educational introduction to activities they wouldn’t ordinarily have access to.

The government are currently backing initiatives to provide activities for children and young adults. We hope to run one week courses in the holidays for school children, primarily secondary, in things that they'd like to do. The way to find this out is to ask them, an interesting concept that doesn't seem to have taken place too much. Just like the adults courses, we want them to be educational and fun but we want to run the centre for them so it's a case of getting people involved.

A lot of people have asked me what the TSN in TSN Centre stands for, it's quite simple really. It stands for Try Something New as we feel that this is the philosophy that the centre should follow. We are aiming to get those who are socially excluded to try a new skill and express themselves better, we aim to get music lovers and gig go-ers to try and see new bands that they wouldn't ordinarily go and see. We are also aiming to get schoolchildren to try new art forms that their schools wouldn't provide for them. So many children have the ability to be creative but simply don't get the opportunity to either express themselves or find the right medium with which to do so.

As always, if you want any more information or have any questions you can mail me on jezmyers@hotmail.com

There will be a proper website appearing soon, I promise!

E-mail in your support

2005-06-17T13:52:00.000Z

Please, please, please send the link to this blog to as many people as you can in order to build up support.

Also, e-mail me with support, so that I can show them to people

Jezmyers@hotmail.com

The illusive search for Sir Howard Bernstein

2005-06-17T13:33:00.000Z

If you're going to try and get money, then you might as well go straight to the top. I've been busily asking about for people to put me in contact with Sir Howard, the Chief Executive of Manchester City Council. I believe that his position, support and innovative views would be hugely beneficial towards getting funding for the centre.

The latest news is that my parents happened to bump into a good friend of his at a funeral yesterday and so I'm getting in touch with his PA. Let's see how that goes!

So where are we up to?

2005-06-17T13:20:00.000Z

Where to start on this one is the tricky part!

Funding - Funding is a tricky one. In order to apply for funding you need to prove that there's a need for the service. In order to prove that there's a need for the service you need to research the service. In order to research the service you need funding to pay for the research. Bit of a catch 22 but we're looking to get round this by way of grants, benefit shows and possibly sponsorship.

Research - Is going ok, bearing in mind there's only a small amount of time I can devote to the project at the moment. I'm busily out and about at gigs trying to drum up support and also visiting day centres to promote the idea. MERC (Manchester education and resettlement centre) have been very supportive, as have Outlook in Openshaw. I'm trying to meet as many people as possible and spread the word to get advice on the best course for funding. Steph @ Nearis has been really good and is setting me up a meeting with the manager there. The big 2 funding options (and without whom the project won't take off) Manchester City Council and Manchester Adult Education Service are both proving a little illusive but I will track them down shortly.

Benefit gigs - In order to pay for the questionnaires we are going to be holding benefit gigs including 5 in 5 days in mid September. If you fancy playing and supporting the centre then please drop me a line. If anyone knows any biger bands that would be willing to get involved, equally please put me in touch! The only way to get this off the ground is to get as much support as possible.

erm... that's about where I'm up to now, just busily trying to drum up support. If anyone knows any Mancunian musicians/artists/dancers/high profile people who would write a letter of support or lend a few minutes of their time, please ask them to get in touch.

...and so it begins

2005-06-17T12:45:00.000Z

Well I've decided that until I get tsncentre.co.uk registered and up and running (with my total lack of web design skills it could be some time) so I've now got a blog so you can see where we're up to with the TSN Centre outline planning and all that.

As always, any help is greatly appreciated and it would be dead handy if anyone could do webdesign...