We’re finally coming down from our Fertilizer festival buzz, but luckily we’ve had lots of love from audiences about this year’s good s**t from Poland to keep us pepped up: “It was bloody brilliant!” “Killer show!” “I love Polish jazz”.
Want to re-live the atmosphere? Check out our podcast with the touring trio of Sing Sing Penelope, Jacaszek and Contemporary Noise Sextet and our short video interview with the amazing Pink Freud.

A big thank you to all of you who came to see us on tour or in London – you made our artists very happy. A massive thanks to all the artists too, it was great to have you at Fertilizer! And thanks too to our funders: Arts Council England, Sound and Music, and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM), not just for their money but for their all-round support in helping us deliver the festival.

As far as the future is concerned, we’re already plotting and planning in true Fertilizer style, keeping our ears to the ground for the latest underground sounds. We’ll keep you updated with our plans, but in the meantime if you have any suggestions for future Fertilizer outings, please do get in touch. Let us know if there’s good s**t anywhere in particular you’d like us to check out and bring back to UK. This is not a competition; there are no prizes to be won – but you might end up seeing your dream festival come to life and how cool would that be?!

After working through some 75 proposals from poets around the country, we’re really pleased to announce that we’ve commissioned Joshua Idehen, Sifundo & Jamal Msebele, Hannah Silva & Alexis Kirke and Sound of Rum to create new material for the Phrased & Confused stage at Summer Sundae Weekender (14-16 August 2009).   Find out more about them and their work here

Fertilizer 2009… Good S**t From Poland is nearly upon us!! And here at the Fertilizer HQ we’re busy putting together the final touches, ready to hit you with a plethora of underground sounds and leftfield new music. The venues are booked, the artists have their flight tickets and we’re ready to go with this year’s festival in London’s East End.

The mash up of sounds and influences has to be seen (and heard) to be believed this year as we bring you everything from the finest Polish hip hop, to electronica, post rock psychedelia and even an orchestra of tiny instruments. To find out more about the acts showcased this year check out their biogs on our website. And for the first time we’ll also be spreading good s**t across the UK as the Fertilizer tour bus heads for Norwich, Bristol, Oxford, Liverpool and Gateshead for a series of very special shows featuring Sing Sing Penelope, Jacaszek and Contemporary Noise Sextet.

Plus thanks to Sound and Music this year Fertilizer has been able to commission a unique British Polish Jazz collaboration between Pete Wareham of Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear fame and Poland’s prog-jazzers Pink Freud. Pete is at the heart of the new breed of improvisers who effortlessly blends rock, electronica and beats with Jazz which makes him the perfect partner for Pink Freud who epitomise Gdansk’s tradition of improvisatory drawing on a truly eclectic range of influences, including jazz, rock, folk, jungle and drum’n’bass, making them one of the most interesting and spontaneous jazz groups we’ve come across in recent years.

Pete has been out in Poland to practise and perform with Pink Freud and you can follow his time over there through his regular updates on Twitter. The guys will be playing 2 exclusive gigs during the festival the first at London’s Cargo on Wednesday the 13th of May and then at Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds the next night, Thursday the 14th.

And this year it’s easier than ever to keep up with everything Fertilizer. Why not become our friend and receive exclusive updates on the festival, read interviews with the acts and be in with a chance to win some goodies? You can also join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

I’ll leave you with our first in our new series of the Fertilizer Phrasebook, which aims to equip you with all the phrases you’ll need to have a good time at this year’s Festival:

No. 1 - Zatańczymy? – which means ‘Shall we dance?’

Following the success of the first ever Mayor’s Music Education Summit, which was produced by the hub in January 2009, the GLA has recently announced a new Trainee Music Education Project Officer post. Full details of the post can be found at http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/jobs/20091505/TF04.jsp

Please note: The vacancy is part of the Industrial Placement scheme for University undergraduates who are seeking to spend one year in ‘industry’ as part of their qualification. Closing date for receipt of completed applications is noon 15th May 2009.

Phrased and Confused heads off on tour this May, taking an irresistible mix of song-writing genius and spoken word to venues in Bracknell, London, Norwich, Derby, Stockton and Exeter.

We’ve invited some of our favourite songwriters and poets to climb aboard the tour bus, get lyrical and explore the spaces between poetry and music. Expect a night of blissed-out pop, dark satire, exuberant wordplay and new collaborations from four very different artists working together for the first time.

Championed by Steve Lamacq, and described by the Guardian as ‘Canada’s best kept secret…the most unjustly overlooked band in Canada’, music collective Woodpigeon are rapidly gaining a cult following for their laid back and lush folk pop.Next up, the brilliant, darkly funny satirist, Murray Lachlan Young who is a regular at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, penned the cult hit ‘simply everyone is taking cocaine’, supported the Pet Shop Boys and is a resident rhymer with the BBC’s Saturday Live.

With nods to Patti Smith, John Cooper Clarke and Tom Waits poet Aofie Mannix and accordianist Janie Armour mix live and recorded sounds to create beautifully haunting soundscapes. We first worked with Aoife and Janie when they wrote new work for our Phrased and Confused stage at Summer Sundae festival last August.
We’re also pleased to be unleashing on a national audience for the first time Dead Poets, a cheeky fast-paced and laugh-out-loud mash up of ‘proper’ poetry and sharp-eyed MCing, courtesy of Mr Mark Grist and MC Mixy.

For more information and the full tour dates visit www.phrasedandconfused.co.uk and join our Facebook group.

Life as the hub’s Fertilizer Festival Intern has been fantastic so far, nearly 3 weeks in and I feel like I’ve been here 3 months! That is due to not only to being made to feel very welcome and at home by the lovely directors and hub ‘family’ but also from the fact that there’s been plenty of work to get stuck into right from day one! It is just what you would want from an internship, plenty of hands on experience and responsibility, lots of expertise and friendly advice to call upon and a fantastic network of contacts and organisations within the arts and creative world to tap into.

I’m really enjoying working on the Fertilizer Festival, it’s a brilliant project and is allowing me to combine all my interests; promotion, live music, marketing and online and digital promotional techniques. I’m really looking forward to the Festival landing in May, and experiencing some underground and slightly left field music from Poland!

I’ll leave you with a few of my favourite links from my first few weeks at the hub…

• Firstly my favourite band at the moment Strawhouses who I’m sure I am now beginning to annoy my fellow hubites with by talking about them so much.

• The Fertilizer Festival on Twitter… please follow us!

• hub operations manager Andi’s RT @Shunt project which I very much enjoyed at The Shunt Lounge.

Tom Johnson, hub Fertilizer Intern 2009.

the hub is on the hunt for a hungry marketer looking to get a break in music. If you think you’ve got marketing in your genes, are looking for somewhere to prove it, and are passionate about all sorts of new music, then we’d love to hear from you. We’re looking for a marketing intern to join the team working on this year’s Fertilizer festival & tour, scheduled for May. You can check out previous Fertilizer Festivals at our website: fertilizerfestival.com

the hub co-produces Fertilizer with sound uk. The team behind Fertilizer is dynamic, entrepreneurial and passionate about good music. As part of that team you’ll get to work on putting together the marketing strategy for the festival, creating on- and off-line publicity materials, building our distribution networks and online presence and getting involved in our PR. We hope that during your three months with us you’ll pick up skills, experience and contacts that will prove useful to you in your future career, and that you’ll have lots of fun into the bargain.

Alongside all this marketing activity, you’ll also get hands on experience of working in a small, busy and friendly team, and will help us to keep things running smoothly.

We’re looking for someone to join our team from the end of February 2009 and be part of it for until the end of May 2009, working 3-4 days a week. So if you’re keen to hone your marketing skills, are passionate about music, like words and have a way with them and are a good team player, we’d love to hear from you. You’ll also need good computer skills, and to be able to commit to being part of our team for three months. In return, we’ll pay your expenses and make sure your internship is something of real value to you. We’re based in east London, by the way.
Here is what Gemma Scott, one of our recent Interns, said about this internship:
“Finding direction in an arts based career can be difficult in many ways. The hub’s Internship has gifted me with the experience of working closely as part of a team with devoted and respected professionals, and has inspired me to pursue a career in arts development and education. I worked on a range of varied and exciting projects and this helped me understand the many ways in which different people contribute to the arts industry through their various job roles to achieve some spectacular results. The guys at the hub are friendly and supportive and will readily adapt the experience towards individual interests and requirements. I would highly recommend this Internship to anyone wanting to progress with a career in the arts.”

HOW TO APPLY
If you’d like to apply to join our team, please send Andi Studer your CV and a covering letter, telling us about your skills, interests, career ambitions, why you are interested in working with the hub and what you can contribute to the team. Andi’s email address is: andi@thehubuk.com

The deadline for getting your application to us is: Weds 18 February 2009
Interviews will be held on Tues 24 February 2009

One of the hub’s associates, John Hart, is taking to the road soon, as part of a 10th anniversary tour by UK folk legends, Edward 11. We’re all off to the London date in London’s Cargo, on 4 February. In a perfect example of how – unlike other consultants and researchers – everyone at the hub all ‘think’ and ‘do’, John will spend a good portion of February on the road.

The links between Edward 11 and the hub team go back years; John and Julia, the hub’s director, first met too many years ago, when the latter was Events Manager at The Stables in Milton Keynes, and her responsibilities included lugging the band’s kit in and out of the tour van. We wait to see if she’s still got the muscles to shift those amps…

Listen here to the Mayor’s Music Education Summit Playlist, which forms part of the first ever GLA Music Education Summit, produced by the hub, and taking place on 14 January 2009. Chaired by Jim Naughtie, the event will bring together over 200 leading figures from music education in the capital, including musicians, orchestras and other music organisations; venues and promoters; music colleges and other education providers; local and borough music services; and policy makers and funding bodies.

The Playlist features tracks by young musicians from across the capital, and will form the soundtrack to the summit, which takes place at City Hall, and which will culminate with the initial hand over of instruments donated via the GLA’s No Strings Attached Instrument Amnesty, delivered in partnership with Time Out.

Young musicians giving live performances throughout the day include a choir from the Royal Academy of Music; students from Yford School, an 18-strong saxophone ensemble from the Centre for Young Musicians; a jazz trio from Guildhall School of Music and Drama; and vocalists and MCs from Bigga Fish and Urban Development.

With just a couple of days to go to the Mayor’s Music Education Summit at City Hall, which we’re producing, we wanted to draw your attention once more to the GLA’s No Strings Attached Musical Instrument Amnesty, delivered in partnership with Time Out. If you’ve got an old, once-loved, instrument which you no longer use, then you can pledge it to the amnesty. To find out more, just go to timeout.com/nostrings.