Charlie Nelson's Activism Blog

  Why UK musicians protested in 2020? Most musicians in the UK are freelance (72%), which means they are self-employed and only get paid if they work. When the Covid-19 crisis happened in March 2020 many UK music venues had to shut because of social distancing and that meant many musicians lost their income. The government put schemes in play to help most working people over the crisis. People employed by organisations received 80% of their wages, many employers made up the remaining 20%. But 10% of UK workers, which is 3 million taxpayers, were excluded from the government schemes. Most self-employed people, like musicians, were left out. Most musicians do not earn a lot of money, so they do not have a lot of savings to live on when they are not working. The Musicians Union did a survey in 2012 and found half of the musicians in the survey earned less than £20,000 per year. Only 5% earned over £50,000. But the music industry in the UK contributes £5.2bn to the economy and £2...

Please could you help me with my Media project?   Background I have to make a film connected with activism and I have chosen to highlight the problems of musicians in Covid-19. The project requires me to create a client and make a film for the client.   I have invented a fictional client called ‘Make it Live!’ that wants me to make a short film to show their support for live music and music venues, so that we still have a live music industry after Covid-19.   ‘Make it Live!’ also wants to promote a not-for-profit platform called ‘Live Support’ that allows fans to access their favourite bands and musicians, including exclusive pieces of music. Through the platform fans can donate to musicians and there are also links to campaigns so they can get involved music activism.     How you can help? I would like to use video footage of your experiences of Covid in my film. If you would like to help, please would you film yourself on your smart phone d...

Scene list and script over.   1. Make it live logo and the scene of a music event. Loud music, thumping beat, dancing and enjoying themselves. I want to hook the audience at this point.   2. News of Covid – getting increasingly worse. Building the tension.   3. Scenes of empty stages and venues. Closed signs. Black and white footage, quiet, sad music, symbolising loss of excitement. Binary opposition from the first scene.   4. Government scheme to help. Freelancers left out. Demonstrations outside parliament. Loss of income, lack of access to financial help.  Voice over script “Live music is not only essential to the economy, but is also important for our culture and mental health. Many musicians are freelancers, which means they work for themselves and are not part of big companies. As a result, they do not get paid if they do not work. Covid-19 has prevented them from working, but has also meant that they do not qualify for government help because they are sel...

I have started to collect primary data for may film, using Microsoft Forms. I want to ask my audience for there views on Musicians in Covid-19 and if they would donate to help musicians.    

  Charlie Nelson · Update on activism theme.

  Client – Make It Live!   The aim of Make it Live! is: To support the interest of live music performance recognising that musicians and venues need audiences and funding.   My client - ‘Make it live!’ -   is a non-profit organisation that is setting up a new platform called ‘Live Support’ to help musicians and venues during the Covid 19 pandemic and beyond. Make it Live! is a campaigning organisation that wants to protect live music, performers and venues from the effects of the current pandemic. Nations all over the world are experiencing their own form of restrictions on public gatherings. The effect of this has been that more and more people have fallen back on to pre-recorded forms of entertainment. But younger, talented performers may not have a lot of pre-recorded work and many parts of the music industry rely on live performance for the majority of their income. If we lose talented performers, and venues, global arts will be poorer when the pandemic...