Shredding

I've spent most of the day recording guitar parts for the songs by The Chefs that me and my brother James are going to record together. All morning, I wrestled with the wrong guitar. When I picked up the right guitar this afternoon, all the tension ebbed away. I haven't got the parts right yet, but there's enough there for James to record over tomorrow, and I know I'll be able to get my parts right afterwards.

I don't think I understood when I started the ECDC portrait residency how much it would change my outlook. Do I regret moving from being a community musician into being a lecturer on music courses? 

Yes and no. I did some big research projects, the PhD that became the book The Lost Women of Rock Music and the subsequent research that became She's at the Controls. Both of those, plus the articles that I wrote, the conference papers and the teaching, I considered to be political activities. I met, learned from and taught some fantastically talented and/or interesting people. I am also hugely proud of the greatest proportion of students that I contributed to the education of.

The monetisation of Higher Education has wrecked its potential. When students pressurise you to give them good grades just because they are paying, and your managers  and sometimes students, shout at you (yes, that has happened) when you refuse to pass really poor work, because it's an insult to people whose work is good and sometimes excellent, well... you risk losing your integrity, and sometimes you feel that's all you've got. Cheating is rife. The whole kit and caboodle is slippery as a fish in water

As soon as I started the art residency, I understood and remembered immediately how an artist slots into a local community, and what their function is. It's about encouragement, not measurement. Competition between workshop participants is pointless: even children could see this when I worked with music on estates and in schools. The groups of people understand that the more collaboration that happens (not always creative collaboration: sometimes openness-and-friendship collaboration), the more satisfying both the process and the product will be. 

This was a fulfilling, enlightening and energising project. Who knows what will come next?