Music for Masterplanning

Music for Masterplanning (2016-2018) was a research-led, participatory, socially situated art practice project in Newham, London that examined how visual languages of affect are central to the production of the contemporary global city as shaped by incoming investments. Local music production is understood as evidence of alternative spatial narratives from marginal urban stakeholders that challenge the affective atmospheres generated through city planning. In this context, localised responses to planned urban changes specific to London are also relevant in a global dimension of urban discourse and artistic research. Music for Masterplanning used a rigorously interdisciplinary and multimodal research methodology, determined by an arts-based procedure of engagement with participants and partners. This approach was integrated with a body of emerging literature and practices, and a multi-component dissemination and output strategy, operating across research networks, conferences, workshops, walks, publishing and events. Firstly, the project mined city marketing material previously unavailable for research and public scrutiny and produced and disseminated seventeen music tracks composed by a broad spectrum of musicians covering many genres, musical abilities and career status. All individuals or groups were living and working in the ‘Arc of Opportunity’ area of regeneration in Newham, London, which constituted the specific geographic boundaries of Music for Masterplanning. In September 2018 the publication Regeneration Songs: Sounds of Opportunity and Loss from East London co-edited by myself, Anna Minton, Malcolm James and Dan Hancox, was published by Repeater Books. This is a multidisciplinary anthology of texts that amplifies and cross-references the research themes of the project. It converges on a specific object of cultural production as seen from different viewpoints across contingent fields of knowledge and practice in academic, cultural and artistic production. Its impact on broader civic discourses and local governance in Newham continues to this day.

Music for Masterplanning (2016-2017) was a research-led, participatory, socially situated art practice project in Newham, London that examined how visual languages of affect are central to the production of the contemporary global city as shaped by incoming investments.

Music for Masterplanning has two components.
1. Music for Masterplanning soundtrack compilation (2018)
This is a collection of originally composed music as soundtracks for the movie ‘London’s Regeneration Supernova’.
2. Regeneration songs: sounds of opportunity and loss from East London (2018) Book