All aboard! the hub and Black/North SEAS present the SEAS Club from Wednesday 28-Saturday 14 June in the Black Sea ports of Odessa, Varna and Mangalia.

Music wise, Irish DJ Deirdre Melvin promises to bring a broad-ranging mix of great tracks – everything from regular club pint spillers to more experimental drum n’ bass and electronic.

We’ll have loads of music from the Black Seas in the mix and there’ll be opportunities for local DJs to guest spot as well. We’re hoping to seek out and showcase the very best in music from the Black Seas via our Playlist Panels - workshop events in each host town.

Do you have your own favourite tracks from the Black or North Seas regions that you feel should make it onto our playlists? Or perhaps you’re a DJ or musician from the area looking to reach an international audience. If so, we’d love to hear from you. Email us at theseasclub@gmail.com

Club Dates

Exit Club, Odessa // Wednesday 28 May - Friday 30 May // 2230h
Comix Club, Varna // Thursday 5 - Saturday 7 June // 2100h
White House on the Beach, Mangalia // Thursday 12 - Saturday 14 June // 2200h

Yes, we’re pleased to announce the return of Phrased & Confused, back to once again explore that creative common ground between music and lyrics.

This year we’re shaking things up a bit, and are packing up our Phrased & Confused belongings to take over a stage at the award winning Summer Sundae Weekender festival, which for three days (8-10 August) takes over De Montfort Hall and Gardens in Leicester.

We don’t want to give the game away here, but we have got some rather special things planned and artists confirmed. For more information, check out www.phrasedandconfused.co.uk where all – well, some anyway – will be revealed.

Our Saturday morning podcast project at Stratford Media Circus finally came to an end this week. We were joined by two BBC radio producers who offered feedback to the participants and talked about how they could develop there skills.With bags of experience and enthusiasm, we all benefited from there received wisdom and we at times wished we were on the shoes of the participants once again!

The young people were each presented with a final mix down of the pieces they have been working on over the past 5 weeks. It included interviews, stories, sound effects, live performances, groups projects, individual projects and of course a range of indents.Overall, the young people enjoyed the project a great deal and got a lot out of it, as did we, and hopefully, there will be plenty more to come.

Big thanks to Lou & Alice for coming in and enlightening us as to the inner workings of BBC radio production, also to Stuart, Sound Connections, Stratford Media Circus and of course, all the young people who took part. Well done everyone!

The Insulting Cabaret will be occupying the Late Lounge of the National Theatre this Saturday. Hosted by Perrier award winning funny guys Noble & Silver, the event will showcase a fine array of international artists all performing around the theme of the Insult.

For more information, download a flyer by clicking here. Be there or be a square, yeah!

The British Council and NESTA opened applications for a new award that seeks to stimulate the development of the UK music industry in an international business context. This aims to find the most talented young entrepreneurs in the UK’s music industry and give them the chance to find out more about what is happening out there, by becoming part of the British Council’s international network of young creative entrepreneurs.

The competition is open to music industry specialists between 25 and 35 years of age, who have at least three years experience and a track record in innovation. Applicants must be seeking to push the boundaries of the industry and have a vision for extending international business and cultural relations through music.

If you think this sounds like you then you could well be the inaugural winner of this prestigious new award.
Applications are now open. The deadline to apply is: 6 May 2008
For more information about the award and details of application procedure please visit: www.creativeconomy.org.uk/ukyme08

With one more session to go, we’ve been busy tying up any loose ends and making sure we have recorded all the material we need to assemble all our shorter audio pieces into one big one. One big Podcast that is - made up of interviews, the groups favourite tracks, stories, sound FX, narration and more. We’ve also had a bit of a photo shoot so the participants can walk away with not just an audio record of the work shops, but a visual one too.

Next week, we will be making the final touches and presenting each participant with a finished product. Stuart has even promised to reward them with a bakewell tart each. We look forward vey much to these moments!

As part of International PEN’s Free The Word! festival, the hub are producing a lively event to be held in the Late Lounge at the National Theatre on Saturday 12 April called The Insulting Cabaret. So what’s it all about I hear you ask?

Hosted by comedy duo Noble and Silver, you can expect fast-paced laughter and a thought-provoking show, packed with outspoken voices, slam poetry and comedy, banned songs and provocative texts, book covers and cartoons, live blogging and much much more.

One person’s insult is another person’s joke. Got a favourite insult or banned work? To insult or not insult - where do you draw the line? Please email insults, stories, poems or even song lyrics to insultingcabaret@gmail.com

For information on how to buy tickets and what else is going down at Free The Word!, click here to download a full brochure.

This Saturday saw the podcast group get to grips with creating an original story and learning how to jazz it up and flesh it out with sound effects sourced from the collective hard drives of Stuart and Tom. Hosting more participants than ever, we worked in separate groups to create two very different pieces of storytelling, including such edge-of-the-seat antics as police chases, trick or treaters, revenge and celebration parties that even we grown-ups couldn’t rival.


It was great to find focus with the young people and demonstrate to them how they could polish up their work using the editing suite - a kind of aural airbrushing! The addition of our in-house wordsmith Jasmine, meant the participants could really explore the relationship between writing stories and using sound effects. A rather extensive collection made it possble to add depth to their stories that featured Big Ben, horses whinnying, doorbells and more. We are building on the skills of the group and are moving towards a nice body of work.

This week, we have focussed on working as a group. After an initial brainstorming session, we came up with the name Music Mashup Podcasters which we think reflects what we have been up to in our workshops.

The next logical step was to create an indent for the group which was a lot of fun - you can see the photos by clicking here. For this, we decided to employ a good old box of percussion including shakers, triangles, djembes, marracas and more. After a lot of noise, we think we’ve come up with something.

We’ve also built on our interviewing techniques and generated reems of material. All in all, the group have got plenty to say so we’re looking forward to next week when we’ll be assembling it all into the form of a podcast.

The day is Saturday, March 8th and we have just finished our first podcasting workshop at Circus Media, Stratford which is delivered in association with Sound Connections and Youth Music Action Zones. The group of young people seemed to enjoy themselves a great deal and commented on how they were looking forward to attending next weeks session.

This week we have focused on the fundamentals of recording and spent time interviewing and getting to know one another. Each participant has worked hard to create audio content based around there favourite musical styles, bands and interests which we will be looking to edit into the form of a podcast over the coming weeks. Led by Stuart Silver and assisted by hubsters Tom and Andi, the programme has gotten off to a cracking start and everyone involved has greatly enjoyed what looks to be a hugely rewarding project. To see the pics, just click here.