Civic Impact

Late last month, the City of Hamilton officially approved a city music strategy that will include the opening of a new music office. While many cities, including Toronto (Yonge Street story here) are pursuing strategies to support and promote their music industry, Hamilton, with a population of only 500, 000, is likely one of smallest cities to take on this kind of project.

 

While it may be smaller city, says Jacqueline Norton, the city’s businesses development consultant of creative industries, "it really battles above its weight in terms of music talent and activity.

 

"Hamilton has a really neat music scene. And some of that obviously is because we’re close to Toronto, but a lot of it is grassroots Hamilton."

 

As examples, Norton points to the homegrown Hamilton Music Awards, Hamilton's multiple music festivals (including the widely popular Supercrawl festival and numerous jazz and blues festivals), and, of course, the national and international success of Hamilton artists (e.g.. Caribou and Monster Truck). 

 

The Council decision freed up $50,000 from reserves that will be used to open a new music and film office and to fund the creation of marketing material and music office branding. The office will also be the home base of the music strategy advisory board that will include representatives from the local music business, festivals, and not for profit organizations.

 

But before any decisions about the board are made, says Norton, the office itself needs to get up and running. 

 

"I’m right now in the process of creating one of those big long checklists of what we need to do before we can do anything else. What do we need to research? Do we need to hire a branding agency? We still have to answer a lot of questions to answer but hopefully in the next few months we should be ready to get going. The first thing we need to do is brand the space. We want to create an identity for Hamilton’s music scene."

 

The overall goal of the office, says Norton, is to support Hamilton’s already established music industry and to attract more music related businesses to the municipality. 

 

"Once we have an established advisory committee they will work with staff to implement the strategy. It’s really a community based strategy. It’s about reaching out to the community-to venues, to  artists, to studios--to try to get things done. It’s only a small office and $50,000 is not that much money, so the office will really be taking on a facilitator role."