EMAS and Sonic Arts Network (1979–2004): Gender, Governance, Policies, Practice

Abstract

This article is based on an examination of the minutes of the Committee/Board and annual general meetings of the Electro-Acoustic Music Association of Great Britain and its successor organisation, Sonic Arts Network, in the period 1979–2004, as well as other supporting documentation. It looks at the ebb and flow of gender constitution. There was a remarkable year or two in the 1990s when gender balance was almost within sight; but then the conditions fostering this period of potential gender balance seem to have dissipated. I reflect on this history, asking related questions: how was the changing gender balance reflected in the commissioning of works and curation of CDs? How were ‘equal opportunities’ issues addressed by the Board as they became more explicit? And how successfully?

Keywords:

• EMAS
• SAN
• Arts Council
• Gender Representation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] Known as the ‘Arts Council of Great Britain’ at this time, and based in Piccadilly in London.

[2] Formally described as an ‘Electronic Music Studios meeting’, there were a few additional individual participants. There is no mention of gender issues in any paperwork or minutes. Further details of these early developments may be found in Emmerson (1989).

[3] There were institution (studio) and international membership categories which did not vote.

[4] Coopted members could theoretically ‘not vote’—that is, they had no responsibilities for core legal or financial matters.

[5] Following his appointment as Director of the South Bank Centre, London, after some years as Artistic Director of the leading, publicly funded computer music centre IRCAM in Paris, Nicholas Snowman led a major initiative to establish a ‘National Studio for Electronic Music’ (planned to be underneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall) within which EMAS had a substantial role. The first working party meeting was in February 1986; although momentum was lost by 1990, there was much positive legacy in terms of performances, education initiatives and public profile.

[6] The membership of the Association (EMAS) elected a Committee; committee members were automatically Directors of the Company (EMAS Ltd.), profits of which were donated to the Electro-Acoustic Music Trust (which also received funds from donors constrained to giving only to charities––and which had a separate group of non-elected Trustees!).

[7] From the records it seems unlikely that any women members stood for election (I do not remember any), although a definitive list of those standing was not always kept: that for 1988 is on file when 14 stood (all male) for the 6 Board memberships (I believe this to be typical for the period); in 1990 Sarah Collins was the sole female in 20 standing for election.

[8] I would be very grateful for further evidence on this issue, to be gathered by the community, ex-members and others.

[9] EMAS had gained (1979–1980) an equipment grant of £29,000 from the Arts Council before any funding for administrative support (1984); this was essentially designed for performances promoted by EMAS, but it also led to an income stream from hire to others.

[10] For example, West Square Studio (directed by Barry Anderson), later part of Morley College, played a major role in EMAS early development.

[11] Completely separate from EMAS, although with Trevor Wishart a major link between the two.

[12] In most years, there was a meeting of the Committee/Board immediately after the AGM which agreed officers (Chair, Secretary and Treasurer) and sub-committee structures, including additional secondments (Projects, Equipment, Education, Publications, etc.).

[13] A cluster of three female directors serving for only one year around this time (1994–1995) seems unfortunate but there was no single overriding reason—except that all had changes in career, workload or location.

[14] The impression I used to have that female Board membership approached parity was a mirage based on the six-member Boards of the 1980s. As noted above, Board membership was expanded to about nine in the early 1990s—thus it elusively and fleetingly approached only about 33%.

[15] A faultline in democracy: Cathy Lane had been designated Projects Director for 1998–1999 and prepared most of the programme. The debate within the Board to extend tenure from one to three years began around this time, such that ruptures of this kind would in future be avoided.

[16] The 1999 AGM ‘slipped’ into early 2000, which led to a confusion in the numbering of minutes for this and a couple of subsequent years and effectively the ‘loss’ of an AGM from the yearly sequence.

[17] The four organisations that merged to form Sound and Music in 2008–2009 were: Sonic Arts Network (SAN), The Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM), The Contemporary Music Network (CMN) and The British Music Information Centre (BMIC).

[18] And most with advanced study—Sarah Collins (City and Sussex), Evelyn Ficarra (Sussex and Berkeley) and Katharine Norman (Bristol and Princeton), for example.

[19] Wishart’s book On sonic art (1985/1996) does not in fact include installation and other related genres within his discussion, but nonetheless clearly encouraged a more open definition of the field.

[20] The origination of some of these broadened definitions in fine arts departments and colleges contributed to their relative separation in Britain from ‘high art’ university music departments throughout the 1980s, and their slow integration often via ‘music technology’ labels in the vast university expansion of the 1990s (MusDig Project workshop [Georgina Born], Oxford, May 2013).

[21] In this context, I mean this to refer to the ‘beginning-middle-end’ paradigm of the ‘music’ tradition, the duration of which is defined by the composer and/or performer (thus including improvisation). The very real coming together in the 1990s of this with a more listener-defined ‘sound installation tradition’ must be the subject of further study.

[22] This must not be taken as a norm: throughout this period there were always freelance Committee members (male and female) who gave vast amounts of time to meetings, paperwork and discussions.

[23] I recall only Hilary Bracefield as a female studio director in HE (Ulster) throughout the first 10 years of EMAS (although I have not meticulously checked this). She was in close contact with EMAS and its activities, but never stood for the Committee.

[24] With increasing accountability for public support in the 1990s, there was a clear but steady shift from ‘informed patronage’ to open calls.

[25] Both the Sonic Arts Research Archive (SARA) and the Advanced Research in Aesthetics in the Digital Arts (ARIADA) projects were set up by Simon Waters at UEA in 2000 on a three-year grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

[26] And finally, while this moves outside my set timescale, there was a collector’s limited edition series of 13 artfully produced CD/booklets released between 2004 and 2008, 9 of which have some female representation—but not that much!

[27] Designated a ‘Gender Issue’, including an article about women composers at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (by Jo Hutton) and special offer CDs of women composers.

[28] In March 2000, Whistlecroft had attended the College Music Society’s first workshop on Women and Music Technology at Agnes Scott College, Atlanta/Decatur, Georgia (USA) on behalf of SAN, with funds provided by the Arts Council of England.

[29] Hallet’s reforms bore fruit in the final period of SAN that saw an extraordinary range of sonic art covered in CD production, concert promotion and most especially at the Annual Festival (Expo).

[30] Except of course where the technology is itself the subject of the discourse—as in genres such as glitch, hardware hacking, circuit bending, live coding and the like.