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I recently got an email from Leicester City Council, who wanted help promoting their launch of BUSK Leicester — a new pilot scheme offering four designated busking spots in the city centre. According to them:
Busk Leicester is a new process which allows and encourages buskers to use designated and agreed spaces in the city which positively impact visitors, local businesses and gives clear guidance on what is and is not permitted within the city under the new Public Spaces Protection Order.
If that sounds good to you, you can apply to busk in Leicester. Or, click here to read more.
Should we believe the hype?
I’m extremely suspicious when councils talk of “encouragement”.
An example from my old hometown: every year the Manhattan Transit Authority (MTA) gets a ton of press around their auditions, all about how much they’re “supporting” the street performance community by admitting 40 a year to their Music Under New York (MUNY) program.
The truth is that a federal judge said the MTA’s ban on busking was unconstitutional. That same year, the MTA launched MUNY. This wasn’t a coincidence. The MTA wasn’t suddenly inspired to support buskers, but to control them, now that they couldn’t ban them entirely.
Back to Leicester City Council. I combed through everything they’ve said about BUSK Leicester, and found a few worrying details.
Publicly, LCC says that all buskers who want to perform in the city centre have to register to perform within BUSK Leicester, but that’s misleading: you only have to register if you want to use amplification — you can busk anywhere else in the city unamplified.
This means the PSPO has effectively given LCC monopoly control over using amps. They also told me “city wardens will be aware of who has been permitted to amplify”, meaning the rules will be enforced.
And finally, the Application form asks for a description of your act and to link to videos where you can be seen to perform. LCC assured me that this was not for quality control, but would be used to promote the buskers in the program. However, they added that the info would be used to identify which performer is involved in case where the council receives a complaint.
Should we give them the benefit of the doubt?
Maybe the busking situation in Leicester used to be awful. Maybe the council believes it was forced to pass a PSPO. Maybe now they’re doing what they can to open Leicester City back up to street shows — just as they claim.
I actually believe (perhaps naively) that’s exactly the motivation for the people working on this program. I think they’re trying to help in the aftermath of a pretty shitty PSPO.
Why do I feel this way? Because they ended our email conversation with these words: “This is a three month pilot scheme, so the more we know about how it comes across / the more it gets challenged, the more we can improve it and ultimately sustain it!”
They also sent me the following:
Our teams remit is to animate the streets of Leicester through Festivals and Events and we hope busking will play a big part in that. Asking people to sign up to busking spaces gives us key information to help sustain and ultimately improve the scheme:
• Track numbers of buskers so the council can accurately record figures to ensure the correct amounts of PRS/PPL fees are paid. (money put back into the music industry) (These fees will be covered by the council)
• Distinguish which areas get the most usage and if we need to revisit the locations. (Our aim is to increase the number of spaces used)
• Track usage times and dates. Do we need to increase the timings, and does the current schedule of days’ work? Currently Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
• The data from the types of acts performing also allow us to distinguish if the locations are fit for purpose. We want to attract all types of buskers including larger street performances and novelty acts. We need to assess if the current sites benefit the performers we are attracting.
So, I have faith, but it will depend on how the scheme works out in practice.
We are hopeful as with any piolet scheme the information and feedback we receive will help us improve Busk Leicester.
Thanks,
Nick
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Closing my Tabs
News, stories and gig opportunities from around the world that I’m not writing about elsewhere. This week the confusingly competitive busker/non-busker busking competitions in Australia, the cashless society is changing how people walk around, and Adam Sandler’s and Ellen’s frank conversation about his busking past…
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