Music heritage helps heal post-industrial communities

Birmingham provides a vivid case study of how popular music heritage can restore well-being in communities that have suffered economic collapse. Like many cities across the United Kingdom and beyond, Birmingham was forged by manufacturing and is now reinventing itself. But for residents who experienced the tailspin of industry firsthand, the city’s rebuilding narrative often fails to acknowledge their struggle or their culture. This survey argues that grassroots heritage initiatives—focused on the rock, bhangra, reggae and pop that put Birmingham on the map—offer a route back to community self-worth.

When the factory dies, the record survives

Birmingham demonstrates the transformation common to many post-industrial centres. After decades of economic dominance built on a thousand trades, manufacturing fell apart in the 1970s and 1980s: car plants and component suppliers closed, foundries went dark and steel presses became silent. The consequences were unemployment, decaying infrastructure and an undermined sense of collective purpose.

Those years were brutal, spawning an array of problems in health and education. But they also produced great popular music. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, the Electric Light Orchestra and later bands like Duran Duran turned the harshest moment into sound. Yet the official reimagining of Birmingham focused on concerts of classical music, museums and municipal rebuilding. The desire to establish the city as a post-industrial place favoured classical orchestration, quite deliberately avoiding the rougher raw material that had sprung from its toughest years. Full official recognition of the deep vein in bhangra and heavy metal only came later, after a persistent drive from enthusiasts. Indeed, other cities reference their popular music scenes on marketing material; Birmingham largely did not. Except on the sly, through word of mouth or networking circles.

Well-being beyond a definition

The word well-being appears constantly in planning strategy. Among academics, it sprouts as a universal aspirational aim meant to include health, happiness, belonging, faith, relationship, trust—a portmanteau big enough for many wants, but always used to define what a healthy community feels in its bones. Across disciplines, scholars remain at odds about how anyone even counts or identifies it precisely; but argument about survey methodology lagged far behind the lived effect.

The strong idea raised here draws data, however: encouraging communities to save and broadcast the remnants of their own culture provides direct democratic benefit, particularly when assets suffer in the change of economic track.

Where well-being meets archives, museums and halls of fame

Across the decades since industry fell apart across British soils, heritage work around jazz, rock and the beats that connected American country spread as a chance for redemption. Working through grants and volunteers, preserve spaces became peopled bubbles of memory. Bumping time after time into fellows reinforcing local storytelling carved holes wide enough against social fragmentation. This effect has long been visible for a productive spin. By running preservation ventures, older volunteers feel uplifted, their personal daily rhythm redeems lost years’ territory.

Place-making and the underground archive

The specifics grow bolder when highlighting Birmingham proper effort. With attention, sometimes long-deferred, crowdsourced work here connects the young relative’s 1980s tape of siblings playing bhangra licks with others uploading liner notes even in scanned piles. Community-run sites stretch cataloging mental effort into an unbounded open album, unvarnished storytelling pieces intertwining the listener across work before their turn. The same feeling drips into a pub meeting to stack cardboard boxes, scanned physical artefacts laid as protection from cheaper box replacements sold by a decaying institutional sector obsessed to its formal storage remits. This pushes ‘parallel initiatives’ in cities around UK and beyond.

Recasting Brighton’s rival as exemplar not capital void

By comparison with focus-state aided policies in places as nearby notably Manchester plus notable port bastion Liverpool boasting national funded Beatles nodes, the production sense here remained behind a shelf from capital dispersal reach. Often labelled early by marketing heads too willing toward symphony days, the local workers gained organic lines away too hidden to bloom formal billing year on year. Denial covering even such facts a powerful phrase of course ‘Home of Metal’ started under kick by Capsule support pulling 2011 exhibition mapping heavy stamp across West Midlands; only from invisible running forward did policy shift knock the formally shut draft council into face visibility requesting incorporate the ‘lost’ 3: rhythm pulse markers into wider urban growth talk with iconic venue makeover use beyond old trade.

The lost seven minutes gap allowing economic crisis breathing space so to swap story banners

The economic grind of last decade’s financial crunch plus subsequent continuous battering on low contracted positions hollow from closing docks again hits soul weight collective and compounds perception this lane cannot land forward if pop acts badge history produce note growth window near east rail extension ring roads for airports still erase record.

When the dust falls at heritage front research across archive cabinets shared recollection—testimony evidence—people plainly upgrade wellbeing by linking names sound young neighborhoods slipping older gang ranks not fresh drop under humiliates because three six mages tune surfaces deep despite boss not turning radio. Home listening swap years spool now exhibit label fair representing restatement entire leg derived using low-cost heritage-otherwise-non-funded time well spent micro crowd walking the reclaimed main road between can council endorsement extended block contract or stall depending charity.

Wider connections: three bridges from music love to social stability

The approach stitching music heritage with municipal build as well-being engine draws on support vertical—seeing earlier community-wide embrace after loss direction centers upon person. Three scaffolding beams rise formed as main benefit mechanism to our process regarding use:

1. Firstly sharing preservation activities fosters meeting others who remember, critique, knot and sigh over records while fostering ties and improving attachment across left segments isolates society dissolves if quiet too long.
2. Team and block competency line volunteers’ listening or band-spread or microphone pile service: expertise emerges known wide to catch lost corners kept without school-move forgetting everyday professional-route erase.
3. Location using posted musical dots boosts resident-level refer scale beyond skyscraper office and shopping hole event to single notable song line cutting back link walls all made evening remixed keep safe recollection rings immediate.

Policy eyes since catch this ‘belong to any city form music marked city' and hope direction once able officially upgrade visitor scheme forward—but constant weak realisation sits change top-down still threatens cut intangible feeling many project micro remains who meet holding a shoebox disc of old practice long return perhaps plus just sitting record lending after heavy previous load.

The real fabric next meeting room crate scanning yields thread needing extension future anchor

A solid session scheduled volunteer preservation making runs free pop scan using tiny budget survive against decades municipal engine inertia after paper plan formally languishes shelves. According Gilliland and Flinn evaluation regarding offline store lines point presence boosts social—spending once informal digit low-foot memory yields back often critical altering exactly default narratives failing listening local cut-off half world—‘political charged notions social privilege rights deliver real impact residents'. Extended thus share using wellbeing plain in lived satisfaction quiet glue acts big meetings at lunch. Power Smyth noting after-turn acceptance trend we map up 2000: policy official nod difference bring it towards from strong anecdote state often.

The scale decision reward to official marking towns popular music base track via inclusive archive over lift exhibition earlier section saw inclusive branch for finalize not fading casual but sustained contract supporting every beat-born local scanning connect 45 to kid next exam step use many bright identity stake forward lift dead stop without resource failing vanish beneath crumbling institute store upgrade cost.

The reflection here matches Birmingham may council pick it broadcast right supporting any door day later large growth patch generate safe crossing through industrial fog part future correct it sign indeed worthy cross—though remembering last beats perhaps equal upgrade respect, reflecting real skin for older city shift deep or in final decades return loss well capture total in note played loud stored community mark helping lead story change shape center anchored the people together move progress after initial long void stretch row skipped road toward gap full pattern recognized growth all lane recover beat home sense healing ahead while note carry right wave across later generation built again possible wide reference crossing late decline arc bright becoming healthy baseline block ready respect story remains set self for and new unknown good potential indeed.

Negative stereotypes and stigma arising from deindustrialisation can be counteracted by such initiatives.

In Birmingham, popular music heritage has taken various physical and digital forms, with numerous archives, exhibitions, and interactive projects such as music maps emerging in recent years. These community-based initiatives invite participation in recognising and preserving popular culture. One of the longest-standing examples is the Birmingham Music Archive (BMA), a digital site founded in 2008 by Jez Collins with initial funding from an Arts Council England research and development grant. Aiming to ‘portray the scope of the city’s popular music heritage’ (Collins 2015, 82), the BMA crowdsources materials, asking users to ‘Tell us what you know, tell us what you think!’ (Birmingham Music Archive n.d.). At the time of writing, roughly 7,000 contributors across the BMA, Facebook, and Twitter platforms had populated the sites with thousands of item entries and comments, uploading digitised artefacts such as photographs, posters, flyers, newspapers, magazines, ticket stubs, and other music memorabilia.

Appealing to ‘anyone who identifies with the city of Birmingham’ (Collins 2015, 82), the sharing of individual histories on the site creates what Ketelaar (2005, 54) calls a ‘community of memory’. This can be understood in the context of community archiving and a politics of cultural empowerment, emerging from ‘the grassroots activities of documenting, recording and exploring community heritage in which community participation, control and ownership of the project is essential’ (Flinn 2007, 153). The significance of the archival record is rooted in ‘identity provenance’ — collections speak to the identity of the communities that built and are served by the archive (Cook 2013, 114). Community archives are thus epistemologically important because their parameters are determined by community members based on vernacular knowledge and expertise (Baker and Huber 2013). Any understanding of well-being generated in such projects echoes the idea that it is bestowed by participation; it is linked to community empowerment, with community archives characterised by ‘the active and ongoing involvement of members of the source community in documenting and making accessible their history on their own terms’ (Stevens et al. 2010, 60, original emphasis).

The resources the BMA generates galvanise ‘great memories’ (Dave Shuck in Birmingham Music Archive 2014), with user comments capturing the affective impacts of participation and how music heritage becomes implicated in collective and personal narratives. As contributor Micki Swann recalls of his experience of ‘flower power evenings’, citing artists and venues of the past: ‘I’m sure our kids think they invented having fun…but those really were the days….Birmingham in 60s. Steve Winwood & Co…Jim Capaldi when he was with Deep Feeling….Mothers….Moat House…oh great days [sic]’ (Birmingham Music Archive 2014). Poster ‘Coco’ is typical in noting an appreciation for BMA’s work, reflecting that ‘nostalgia is whizzing away out into inter-stella space [sic]’ (Birmingham Music Archive 2014). Yet the archive’s aim is not defined by or limited to nostalgic reverie, nor by its digital status. The BMA has formed alliances with other enterprises to reach citizens to whom the city’s popular music heritage is unknown. Its activities extend to events, exhibition curation, educational initiatives, and the co-creation of commemorative street art. While these activities involve people for whom popular music heritage is part of their lived memories, they also purposefully seek to involve younger generations to generate feelings of pride in and belonging to place. For example, depicting the roots of the tree alongside names of Birmingham reggae bands including UB40, Steel Pulse, Musical Youth, Jam Jah, and Friendly Fire Band, a mural at St Martin’s Youth and Community Centre in Highgate shows how such musical heritage offers fertile ground for contemporary practice to grow. Created as part of ‘Our Musical Roots’, a project designed to investigate and illustrate Birmingham’s music heritage and its place in local community history and culture, the work was carved out of a collaboration between organisations and residents.

Figure X.1: Our Musical Roots Mural, Highgate (Artist: Title; Photograph: Jez Collins)

Supported by Heritage Lottery Fund grants, the ‘Our Musical Roots’ project originated with local arts company City of Colours, who worked in conjunction with the BMA to run a program for under-16s in underprivileged areas of the city. The project directly addressed aspects of social exclusion identified as a priority for Birmingham (Brookes et al. 2016, 87–88). It sought to address a perceived ‘lack’ of knowledge about the city’s popular musical heritage among younger citizens, aiming to engender a sense of investment in its traditions and possibilities. For Becci Wright, director of City of Colours, the project aimed at ‘instilling a sense of pride’ in the city’s history among its disaffected participants, thereby increasing the chances of its preservation (cited in Suzie 2016). At the project’s inception, organisers discovered that only 11 per cent of participants could name a single musician from Birmingham. The project thus played an educative role; a ten-month training programme involved participants attending a summer school ‘where they took part in a number of music heritage based workshops and activities’ (Anon 2016). Participants investigated music culture categories reflecting the breadth and diversity of the city’s communities and its music: dub and reggae; bhangra and Asian-produced music; and metal and indie. Participants conducted interviews with musicians, investigated the city’s iconic music venues, and shared their knowledge and developing skills with other young people in heritage workshops organised in local schools. They produced ‘re-imagined album covers’ that were exhibited at the City of Colours festival (HLF 2016), as well as two permanent murals and an exhibition.

In this example, faith in the benefits of heritage engagement aligned with the well-being objectives of other creative activities. As Bungay and Vella-Burrows (2013, 51) argue, the performance or production of art ‘has the potential to address young people’s sense of self-worth and life skills as a mechanism for promoting behaviour change and healthy lifestyles’. Suggestions that such outcomes were achieved by ‘Our Musical Roots’ were captured in participants’ creative expressions, their feelings presented on a series of ‘speaker boxes’ that were part of the final exhibition event. The words accompanying the ‘speaker box’ art works

highlighted that participants connected with and took ownership of their city’s music heritage, understanding its role and value to place: ‘Where I come from we play music / It’s my heritage my ancestors choose it!’.

Where the City of Colours project sought to illustrate Birmingham’s musical roots, other initiatives have highlighted Birmingham’s musical routes by way of producing various accounts of the city’s popular music heritage and its formation. In 2010, the BMA contributed to this practice as part of plug in, a major exhibition at the Midland Arts Centre. Curated by artist Simon Poulter, plug in reflected Birmingham’s changing role as a city, examining its past, present, and future and the variety of ways culture is expressed and accessed in the city. Affirming how popular music is a recognisable part of everyday culture, the BMA’s contribution came in the form of the co-produced film Made in Birmingham: Reggae Punk Bhangra (2010) and the creation of a custom Google Map detailing crowd-sourced contributions from the community. This latter was part of a collaborative project with (then) Birmingham-based internet entrepreneur Jon Bounds, whose ‘projects work in the space where emotion and place collide – online and off’. Bounds created a detailed map; contributors placed labelled digital pins that each signified an aspect of musical heritage drawn from individual memories, experiences, and local knowledge of the city, thus tracking heritage in both spatial and temporal dimensions. For the exhibition itself, a physical, etched glass installation of the map was created. A more impressionistic rendering of heritage was conveyed by stripping away data on place names, streets, and landmarks. The reassembled map highlighted clusters of activity, densest in the city centre and sparser in outlying suburbs, prompting viewers to view the city through its musical topography and the layered density of memory. As Bounds noted, ‘The printed map acted as an item to explore and jump off rather than a set of closed information’ (Long and Collins 2011, 155). Like the other projects described here, the aim was affectively inclusive, designed to aid participation and a sense of shared ownership of the heritage; no hierarchy of person, place, period, or genre was imposed. The map evidenced often esoteric vernacular knowledge and a sense of attachment in terms of sites of meaning, sometimes highly individualised, often shared. This meant that in the suburbs one might find pins regarding where a musician was born or lived, while nearer the city centre, more pins marked iconic venues, record stores, and sites of subcultural communion.

The ethos of the Birmingham Music Map project is echoed in a further and more recent mapping of the city’s music history and heritage, illustrated by London-based artist Claire Hartley. Hartley was commissioned as part of a two-year, city-wide community arts project that aimed to ‘create a cultural sound map of Birmingham’. This initiative involved community contributors sourcing sounds ‘to help shape the project and raise awareness of the diverse cultures within Birmingham’. Drawing on content curated by the BMA, Hartley’s map plotted the city’s historical venues, record stores, recording studios, and musicians. It connects past to present through its online iteration, in which sites on the map are linked to field recordings being captured by composers and community collaborations commissioned by the project.

Accessible as an interactive sound map online, the illustration has also been printed in poster form, on tote bags, and on postcards. These are used to promote the project and also reinforce the breadth of the city’s music heritage as they circulate. Like the other projects described here, this sound map, in linking music heritage to contemporary creative production, is founded on concern for the well-being of a community of interest. The desire to create unique compositional pieces reflecting ‘a sense of community pride and passion’, combined with illustrations that circulate throughout the city, speaks to the capacity for music heritage to act as a tool that promotes and enhances local civic engagement while simultaneously supporting the making of Birmingham as a music city.

The projects described above are only a small sample of actions by various organisations that, in the absence of any official or strategic move to formalise Birmingham as a popular music city, actively pursue an agenda in which confidence in the past signals the potential of present and future creativity. Sharing common purpose, organisations such as the Birmingham Music Awards, Birmingham Music Coalition, Capsule, Wassifa Sounds, the Birmingham Music Archive, and others are sharing knowledge and expertise, developing partnerships and relationships, and pursuing increasingly joined-up approaches in connecting the city’s musical heritage to its contemporary musical practices. Three brief examples highlight this shift.

First, the Birmingham Music Archive completed in June 2019 a project titled The History Of Grime with the youth centre The Pump (see The Pump 2019). This project represented the first attempt to document the contemporary music making of a community of grime creatives through the lens of the genre’s historical roots in the city. Working with young people and the grime community, the project has documented the activities of over seventy musicians, managers, entrepreneurs, and radio stations, alongside producing films and documentaries. The project concluded with an exhibition, celebration, and impromptu soundclash of young and emerging grime and rap artists. Second, in 2018 the Birmingham Music Awards (2018) sought ‘to bring together and recognise the achievements of musicians and industry professionals across the Midlands’. This initiative is explicit in its mission to celebrate the past, present, and future of music, aiming to ‘put Birmingham on the map’ as a music city. Third, Simon Delahunty-Forrest, Head of City Design and City Centre Development at Birmingham City Council, has prompted reflections on the conceptualisation and development of infrastructural projects that are changing the urban landscape and their connection with the city’s past. He has introduced developers to cultural organisations and intermediaries, showing interest in how the city’s music and, more broadly, cultural tangible and intangible heritage is understood, respected, and incorporated into new developments, and how this can serve as place-making for Birmingham, its communities, and visitors (Simon Delahunty-Forrest, personal communication with Jez Collins, 20 November 2018 and 6 June 2019).

This chapter has interrogated the connection between popular music heritage initiatives and a sense of well-being for local communities, focusing on the case study of a post-industrial music city — Birmingham, UK. Music city policies and creative city policies more broadly ‘have been criticised for not delivering tangible benefits for deprived urban communities’ (Perry and Symons 2019, 66). The Birmingham case study demonstrates how a bottom-up approach to making a ‘music city’ is concerned with the connection between community and culture and what it delivers beyond local council rhetoric pursuing economic advantage. By exploring potential well-being benefits associated with community participation in local popular music heritage initiatives, we suggest that the concept of ‘music city’ can be enriched by incorporating the actual effects of turning to music in the rebranding of a city for its local community. As Power and Smyth (2016, 165) observe, community-based heritage conservation offers a wide range of benefits tied up with ‘firstly, whetting one’s appetite and original passion for history and place; secondly, meeting other like-minded people and seeing wider community connections grow; and thirdly, seeing the final “product” come to fruition and sharing it’. By bringing community members together to collect, preserve, and celebrate a common local culture that makes Birmingham a music city, community heritage projects highlight and make use of locals’ vernacular knowledges and memories; promote community participation among individuals; and strengthen place-based identities and affective attachments to place. Heritage practices in music cities thus contribute to a local sense of belonging, trust, reciprocity, and identity — all identified by Mchenry (2009) as critical for well-being. Enhanced feelings of well-being among a community of interest represent a tangible benefit that can be provided in music cities embracing community-led music heritage initiatives.

The connection between music heritage and community well-being can be tracked in the projects detailed above. While cultural policy-makers have recognised the potential value of heritage projects for branding post-industrial Birmingham as a music city, only local community initiatives have so far implemented these strategies in a concerted way. As our examples demonstrate, these initiatives have effectively produced ways of engaging citizens with the city’s past and contemporary music cultures — both integral to producing the cultural and economic value inherent in the music city concept. Projects like those outlined here often stem from dissatisfaction that popular music heritage has been overlooked or requires preservation. To fill this gap, these projects have approached heritage activity in ways that are participatory and strive for inclusiveness. They call upon and ignite passionate debate and involvement among those for whom such heritage is part of their living memory, while also sparking interest and engagement among those deemed to lack such heritage.

In Birmingham, which we suggest is indicative of a wider sphere of practice, engagement with these grassroots initiatives, alongside major projects such as the sound map, endorses attachment to music, to its value and meaning for community life and identity. These projects attest to the idea of the music city — not one producing a homogenous, clearly defined narrative overlaying a meaning of place, but rather one of ongoing negotiation. Music city policies need to ‘recognise that the role of culture in economic regeneration is situated within the context of meaning-making in the everyday’ (Perry and Symons 2019, 73). A plurality of possibilities emerges from vernacular knowledge and participation, suggesting also a variety of ways to conceive of, conceptualise, and further explore the realities of well-being in the music city.

Birmingham City Council. 2012. Destination Birmingham: Birmingham, A Music City. https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/450/destination_birmingham_a_music_city_february_2012.pdf. Accessed 19 February 2019.

Birmingham Music Archive. n.d. About Us. http://www.birminghammusicarchive.com/about-us/. Accessed 19 February 2019.

Birmingham Music Archive. 2014. “Midnight City.” Birmingham Music Archive. http://www.birminghammusicarchive.com/midnight-city/. Accessed 28 February 2019.

Birmingham Music Awards. 2018. About Us: Awards for Birmingham. https://birminghammusicawards.com/#!/about. Accessed 30 July 2019.

Brookes, Nadia, Jeremy Kendall, and Lavinia Mitton. 2016. “Birmingham, Priority to Economics, Social Innovation at the Margins.” In Social Innovations in the Urban Context, edited by Taco Brandsen, Sandro Cattacin, Adalbert Evers and Annette Zimmer, 79–96. Springer: London.

Bounds, Jon. n.d. More About Me. http://www.jonbounds.co.uk/about-me/. Accessed 26 July 2017.

Brabazon, Tara. 2009. “Brand Wellington: When City Imaging is GLAM’ed: a Personal View.” Branding and Public Diplomacy 5 (4): 260–275. https://doi.org/10.1057/pb.2009.22.

Bungay, Hilary, and Trish Vella-Burrows. 2013. “The Effects of Participating in Creative Activities on the Health and Well-being of Children and Young People: A Rapid Review of the Literature.” Perspectives in Public Health 133 (1): 44–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/1757913912466946.

Cantillon, Zelmarie, and Sarah Baker. 2018. “DIY Heritage Institutions as Third Places: Caring, Community and Wellbeing Among Volunteers at the Australian Jazz Museum.” Leisure Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2018.1518173.

Cohen, Sara, Robert Knifton, Marion Leonard, and Les Roberts, eds. 2015. Sites of Popular Music Heritage: Memories, Histories, Places. London: Routledge.

Collins, Jez, and Paul Long. 2015. “Fillin’ in any Blanks I Can”: Online Archival Practice and Virtual Sites of Musical Memory.” In Sites of Popular Music Heritage: Memories, Histories, Places, edited by Sara Cohen, Robert Knifton, Marion Leonard and Les Roberts, 81–96. London: Routledge.

Collins, Jez. 2015. “Doing-it-together: Public History-making and Activist Archiving in Online Popular Music Community Archives.” In Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-yourself, do-it-together, edited by Sarah Baker, 77–90. London: Routledge.

Cook, Terry. 2013. “Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms.” Archival Science 13 (2–3): 19–120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-012-9180-7.

Fenton, Hazel. 2013. “Museums, Participatory Arts Activities and Wellbeing.” Teaching in Lifelong Learning: A Journal to Inform and Improve Practice 5 (1): 5–12.

Flinn, Andrew. 2007. “Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 28 (2): 151–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/00379810701611936.

Flinn, Andrew, Mary Stevens, and Elizabeth Shepherd. 2009. “Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream.” Archival Science 9 (1): 71–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9105-2.

Gilliland, Anne, and Andrew Flinn. 2013. “Community Archives: What are We Really Talking About?” Paper presented at Nexus, Confluence, and Difference: Community Archives meets Community Informatics, Prato CIRN Conference, 28–30 October.

Heritage Lottery Fund. 2016. Our Musical Roots. https://www.hlf.org.uk/our-projects/our-musical-roots. Accessed 1 September 2017.

Home of Metal. n.d. Background. https://homeofmetal.com/the-project/about/. Accessed 19 February 2019.

Hopkins, Eric. 1989. Birmingham: The First Manufacturing Town in the World, 1760–1840. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Istvandity, Lauren, Sarah Baker, and Zelmarie Cantillon, eds. 2019. Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory–Heritage–History. London: Anthem Press.

Kennedy, Liam, ed. 2004. Remaking Birmingham: The Visual Culture of Urban Regeneration. London: Routledge.

Ketelaar, Eric. 2005. “Sharing: Collected Memories in Communities of Records.” Archives and Manuscripts 33 (20): 44–61.

Khabra, Gurdeep. 2014. “Music in the Margins? Popular Music Heritage and British Bhangra Music.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 343–355. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2012.758652.

Kinkead, Dan. 2016. “Detroit Case Study.” In Remaking Post-Industrial Cities: Lessons from North America and Europe, edited by Donald K. Carter. New York: Routledge.

Long, Paul, and Jez Collins. 2011. “Mapping the Soundscapes of Popular Music Heritage.” In Mapping Cultures: Place, Practice, Performance, edited by Les Roberts, 144–159. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Long, Paul, and Jez Collins. 2016. “‘My god i loved this tune:)RESPECT 4 POSTING!!!!’: Affective memories of music in online heritage practice.” In Memory, Space and Sound, edited by Johannes Brusila, Bruce Johnson and John Richardson, 85–101. Bristol: Intellect.

Lordon, Frédéric. 2013. La Société des Affects. Pour un Structuralisme des Passions. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

McHenry, Julia Anwar. 2009. “A Place for the Arts in Rural Revitalisation and the Social Wellbeing of Australian Rural Communities.” Rural Society 19 (1): 60–70. https://doi.org/10.5172/rsj.351.19.1.60.

Oakley, Kate, Dave O’Brien, and David Lee. 2013. “Happy Now? Well-being and Cultural Policy.” Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly 31 (2): 18–26.

Parker, David, and Paul Long. 2004. “‘The Mistakes of the Past’? Visual Narratives of Urban Decline and Regeneration.” Visual Culture in Britain 5 (1): 37–58.

Peck, Jamie, and Kevin Ward, eds. 2002. City of Revolution: Restructuring Manchester. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Perry, Beth, and Jessica Symons. 2019. “Towards Cultural Ecologies: Why Urban Cultural Policy Must Embrace Multiple Cultural Agendas.” In Cultural Intermediaries Connecting Communities: Revisiting Approaches to Cultural Engagement, edited by Phil Jones, Beth Perry and Paul Long, 63–76. Bristol: Policy Press.

Power, Andrew, and Karen Smyth. 2016. “Heritage, Health and Place: The Legacies of Local Community-based Conservation on Social Wellbeing.” Health & Place 39: 160–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2016.04.005.

The Pump. 2019. The History of Grime. https://www.thepump.org.uk/about-the-hog-project. Accessed 30 July 2019.

Rex, John, and Robert Moore. 1969. Race, Community and Conflict: A Study of Sparkbrook. London: Oxford University Press.

Roberts, Les, and Sara Cohen. 2014. “Unauthorising Popular Music Heritage: Outline Of A Critical Framework.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 241–261. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2012.750619.

Stevens, Mary, Andrew Flinn, and Elizabeth Shepherd. 2010. “New Frameworks for Community Engagement in the Archive Sector: From Handing Over To Handing On.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 16 (1/2): 59–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527250903441770.

Suzie. 2016. “Birmingham’s Musical Heritage Commemorated With Pop Up Exhibition.” Brumhour. https://brumhour.wordpress.com/2016/11/03/birminghams-musical-heritage-commemorated-with-pop-up-exhibition/. Accessed 1 September 2019.

Uglow, Jenny. 2003. The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. New York: Macmillan.

Wheatley, Daniel, and Craig Bickerton. 2017. “Subjective Well-being and Engagement in Arts, Culture and Sport.” Journal of Cultural Economics 41 (1): 23–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-016-9270-0.

Wills, Clair. 2017. Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-war Britain. London: Allen Lane.