Publication of the edited collection "Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-yourself, Do-it-together"

The edited collection "Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-yourself, Do-it-together" is now in print, having been released by the publisher, Routledge, on 18th May 2015. 

Guest blog post: sustainable archiving --- overview of the article "Sustaining popular music's material culture in community archives and museums"

In this post, guest blogger Lauren Istvandity provides an overview of a journal article written by Sarah Baker (Griffith University) and Jez Collins (Birmingham City University) that emerged from the ARC funded project “Do-it-yourself popular music archives” and which was recently published in the journal International Journal of Heritage Studies.

Guest blog post: when the trash of popular music culture becomes archival treasures --- overview of the book chapter "Saving Rubbish"

In this post, guest blogger Lauren Istvandity provides an overview of a book chapter written by Sarah Baker and Alison Huber that emerged from the ARC funded project “Popular Music and Cultural Memory” and which was recently published in the edited collection “Sites of Popular Music Heritage: Memories, Histories, Places”.

Visit to the National Film and Sound Archive

Last month I travelled to Canberra to accompany South Korean colleagues, Hyunjoon Shin and Keewoong Lee from Sungkonghoe University, on their fact finding visit to the National Film and Sound Archive. 

"Locating the canon in Tamworth" winner of the 2014 Rebecca Coyle Prize

The International Association for the Study of Popular Music Australia-New Zealand (IASPM-ANZ) Branch Conference was recently held in Dunedin, New Zealand. It was announced during the conference that the 2014 Rebecca Coyle Prize for the best paper on popular music in the Australia-New Zealand region published in 2013 was awarded to my article, co-authored with Alison Huber, called 'Locating the canon in Tamworth: Historical narratives, cultural memory and Australia's "Country Music Capital"'.

Rockmuseum Munich - the highest DIY museum in the world?

Although last month my data collection for the project officially concluded, a brief trip to Munich, Germany, has enabled me to expand my fieldwork sites by one with a visit to Rockmuseum Munich. No interviews were conducted here but it was a delight to discover this little gem tucked away in a famous Munich tourist attraction.

Data collection concludes

The fieldwork stage of this research has now come to an end. This blog post gives a brief 'statistical' overview of the fieldwork.

Collaborations with colleagues at Birmingham City University

This month should have seen me visiting the UK and Ireland for events co-organised with colleagues from Birmingham City University. Circumstances meant I had to stay in Australia but the events went on in my absence. Accounts of both events have been helpfully blogged by Jez Collins.

Presentation on affective archiving and collective collecting at Edinburgh conference

The last two days have been spent in Edinburgh at the conference "On Collecting: Music, Materiality and Ownership" held at the National Museum of Scotland. 

Popmuseum - a museum and archive of popular music in the Czech Republic

My travels for this research have already taken in a host of countries - Australia, Austria, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, UK and USA. My latest destination is the Czech Republic where today I made a visit to Prague's Popmuseum, located in District 2.