A NEW ONLINE LEARNING HUB FOR ARTISTS AND INDUSTRY
CLICK HERE TO VISIT FOLK TALK ACADEMY
Covid-19 has hit the music industry harder than most, with artist and industry careers largely put on hold as the world has grappled with the virus. Now as the green shoots of recovery emerge, English Folk Expo launch Folk Talk Academy, a virtual college campus providing a learning hub for artists and industry which gives them access to a broad range of music industry expertise to equip them for their career in a post-Covid world.
Folk Talk Academy is free and available to all, and all lectures will be closed captioned.
Lecture Theatre – Long form lectures and webinars
Library – Essays and other writings
Student Union – Bits and bobs by and for artists which we thought you’d like
Speakers Corner – Short form talks and presentations
Conference Centre – Panel discussions, in conversations and online conferences
The Lecture Theatre and Library content has been specially commissioned following English Folk Expo’s extensive sector consultation survey, Folk, The Pandemic And The Future which had over 600 respondents.
Central to Folk Talk Academy is a wide-ranging and ambitious series of nearly fifty Zoom webinar lectures running from May to August 2021, which feature presentations and in-conversation sessions by experts from across the music industry and beyond including Wozzy Brewster OBE on artist management, Bev Burton of Black Deer Festival on programming festivals, Dee Bahl, manager of Biffy Clyro, on working with record labels, Francine Gorman from Keychange on gender equality in music, Beth Morton from United Talent Agency on working with agents, David Johnson from Cause4 on funding opportunities for artists, Roger Wilson from BLiM discussing issues for black artists and industry, lawyers from both Simkins and Clintons tackling the intricacies of record, publishing and management deals, and a very special roundtable discussion with artists Eliza Carthy, Jon Boden and James Yorkston on their experiences of being signed to range major and independent labels.
Lectures will last for one hour, with most including a fifteen minute Q&A with online participants towards the end of the session. All lectures will be recorded live and be available to view again on the Folk Talk Academy website.
Funded by Arts Council England, Folk Talk Academy will also feature an online library which will hold extended pieces of writing on ten sectors of the music industry, as well as an online conference centre giving access to footage from English Folk Expo’s 2020 Folk Talk Live conferences. A Speakers’ Corner will allow registered Folk Talk Academy ‘students’ to access additional video content created by industry experts over the last year, and finally a virtual Students’ Union will ensure that anyone accessing Folk Talk Academy can also enjoy the social side of academy life.
