VASE21 (Virtual Annual Study Event 2021)
As many of you will probably already know or have guessed, the Annual Study Weekend will be a bit different this year. Firstly, it will be held mid-week (13th-15th April) and will consist of online presentations and activities over Zoom. We are calling the event VASE21 (Virtual Annual Study Event) because it will be a different experience and isn’t being held on a weekend. It is completely free and will take place during work hours – so we’re expecting you can just dip in and out of what is interesting and relevant to you. Since everything is online this year, it should limit the need to claim time or travel expenses, and we hope this will make it easier for people to participate. VASE21 might therefore be able to attract even more attendees than the normal ASW.
The theme for VASE21 is “Music happens in performance”. The programme is still being finalised, and we will post it once it is complete, but here is a taster of some of the items you can expect:
We have some exciting key speakers lined up. Kenneth Crookston, the executive officer of Brass Bands England, will talk about brass band development and resources. Lizzy Buckle, who is studying a PhD with the RHUL and Foundling Museum, will present her research on the networks of musicians in 18th-century charity concerts. Almut Boehme from the National Library of Scotland will talk about using performance to bring the music in library collections to life. Roy Stanley from Trinity College Dublin will talk about the process of bringing the archive of Ina Boyle compositions to performance. And there’s more still to be confirmed.
Beyond that there will be some ‘Roundtable’ group discussions. We will explore diversifying and decolonising music collections, look at several case study examples of libraries being used as a performance space, and discuss the way forward for academic and public music libraries.
There will also be a quiz on the opening evening, which should be fun! We hope to see you at some (or all!) of the events.
Meet Your New Blog Supervisor
Finally, I’d like to introduce myself, if that’s okay. Hi! I’m Kirsty Morgan and I’m excited to be taking over the role of blog supervisor from Margaret Jones. I just recently moved from Scotland to Manchester to be the new Head Librarian at Chetham’s School of Music – which I am very much enjoying. If I’m lucky, some of you may vaguely recognise me from the ASW 2019 or through the Music Libraries Trust, where I volunteer as Bursaries Administrator. Or possibly from the most recent Brio magazine, where I wrote an article about Linked Data and the David Fanshawe World Music Archive. More likely, though, I’ll be a completely new face to most of you, but hopefully that can change! Please do get in touch if you have any ideas or would like to contribute in any way to the blog – or just to say hi. I look forward to working with you all.