MU Buskers

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motty (

65)
True muso
Gold Member

Joined: 11 Oct 2005
Posts: 409
United Kingdom
London

Posted: Thu 03 Apr 2008 15:33

Anyone else both a member of the MU and a licensed busker?

I have a wheeze in mind which involves trying to convince the MU that they should have at least some resources for buskers available on their website plus a couple of other ideas. Currently there is absolutely nothing on their site that even mentions the word 'busking'. That's ridiculous, as while it isn't necessarily the best gig in the world, it's still a viable option for a lot of people as part of a spread of things, or even, for some, by itself. There's a whole bunch of licensing schemes up and down the country, and other places where it no license is even required. But information about all this seems to be thin on the ground, as do general busking resources.

I've spoken to a few other busking members who say that the idea of an MU busking chapter has been floated before but never happened owing either to a lack of numbers or a lack of interest. Surely it can't be the latter. I've made initial contact with an MU type who agrees with me that something could and ought to be done by the MU for busking members, and I'm trying to get together ideas other than my own and some vague idea of the number of people this could already involve.

If any of this makes sense to you, please to respond either here or mail me directly via my profile.

TIA.
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DanC (

73)
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Joined: 02 Dec 2004
Posts: 6467
United Kingdom
Yorkshire

Posted: Thu 03 Apr 2008 17:31

Hey Motty. We are MU members and busk regularly for fun, cash and getting other gigs. You have a great point here and any help you want to bug the MU we will gladly lend. There must be a pretty significant number of busking members of the MU, and it would be incredibly useful to have a regularly monitored list of busking spots in the country with info on the legal requirements for each one .

Dan & Deryn
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Shawsax

Joined: 01 Jan 1970
Posts:

Posted: Thu 03 Apr 2008 17:41

Right, my post seem a bit mentalist, so here's another go.

I used to busk weekly until last summer. The problem is that busking schemes outside of London fail. Some councils around here have removed such schemes. The problem is the weather, building work, people not turning up and unlicensed buskers turning up.

Many councils still have schemes, but they are only partly used or ignored anyway. It seems that any form of bureaucracy in busking is unwelcome. Those used to dealing with any outside party know that the systems are subject to abuse and worse

I would personaly prefer not to have any form of Police on the activity, at all full, stop. If you want to busk, then busk.

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Edited: Thu 03 Apr 2008 19:44

motty (

65)
True muso
Gold Member

Joined: 11 Oct 2005
Posts: 409
United Kingdom
London

Posted: Fri 04 Apr 2008 2:07

Cheers, D&D - I'll be in touch.

And Mr S, I am in complete agreement with you that there are all manner of issues around the way that licensing schemes are operated. I am not going to go into details but from my own experience I would suspect that the scheme does not exist anywhere that couldn't be handled better, or at least very much looks that way from the buskers end of it.

This is exactly why I want to shlep the MU into it. If the schemes were run well and militated towards making it such that a reliable and hard-working busker (not those who regularly book pitches and don't show or those who feel that any kind of official sanction on busking makes it too corporate for their lily-pure anarchist souls) would be rewarded by the system there wouldn't be the need I think there is to get the MU involved particularly.

For example, when it comes to the police, I think the MU could potentially play a significant role in working out what best practise was and feeding this information through to local councils in order to take the burden of ever having to even worry about buskers off the police entirely. The police have got better things to worry about and they know it. My understanding is that part of the reason why the London Underground system was set up was that the police were totally fed up with wasting time chasing buskers around when 99% of the time they were clearly not actually a problem.

Surely it's precisely people like yourself with experience of what the issues were with a particular scheme in a particular place that could help getting what can be fixed fixed. I'd be interested to know how the MU would respond to being approached with a list of busking members around the country together with a list of suggestions from those members as to what the MU might be able to do to help in terms of a) becoming a repository of best practise, b) acting as an intermediary able to negotiate on buskers behalf, c) feeding back to people running schemes the things they need to know in order to make those schemes work well for everybody, and d) you tell me.

Also cheers for making me think this through some more.
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lamb21 (

72)
Forum legend

Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 4265
United Kingdom
Norfolk

Posted: Fri 04 Apr 2008 16:08

As I'm neither a busker nor a member of the MU I'm probably a bit out of place here but anyway..

In Norwich you can turn up with your guitar / sax / digeridoo / comb & paper & play, simple as. I think there are a few places where the police will ask you not to play & if the shops in the area you're in complain then you'll probably get asked to move but basically if you want to do it, you can.
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dsmyth (

8)
New user

Joined: 27 Feb 2005
Posts: 13
United Kingdom
York

Posted: Tue 22 Jul 2008 13:04

I'm not an MU member but busk regularly in York. It would be useful for the MU to offer advice to councils on this front. The York Council system is ok, but a booking system would be very beneficial as although you're not meant to stay in one place for any longer than a certain amount of time, it's very hard to police this as another busker and you find that the best pitches are often hogged all day. There are obviously ways around this, but it's still a bit annoying...
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