About this webzine

Information for venues | Policy | Mission statement | Editorial Advisory Panel | About us

Why we need your support

Arts in Leicester is appealing to our readers to help support the magazine by making a donation. Keeping the magazine going costs money and we receive no grant or funding of any kind so have to meet the running costs from our own pockets.

All the work on the content on this web site is given free by volunteers - it's a work of passion not a commercial enterprise.

Whilst we could charge for advertising, this has in reality not brought in any income. The adverts you see on this site are given free of charge to help local businesses.

We plan to change this and gradually remove all advertising unless businesses wish to make a donation to keep their presence on the site. More about this on our advertising page.

If we are successful in attracting advertising and sponsorship we will drop our public appeal for donations. This will however take time to achieve and the current adverts will run to the end of July while we contact the businesses to ask if they wish to keep their ads on the site.

In the meantime we are dependent on the generosity of readers who value what this magazine offers.

If you like what you have seen here, please make a donation.

The Team

Trevor Locke is Editor of Arts in Leicestershire. Apart from being a web designer with over 15 years experience, Trevor has also worked as a full-time journalist and magazine editor and began his career as a reporter for Reuters, when its headquarters was in Fleet Street. He has published a large body of work and one fairly large book.

9th August 2009.

Trevor Locke runs Artsin in his spare time. It's not a full time job. This is because we do not receive any grants or funding to support the cost of running the web site.

The costs of hosting and domains is met from small amounts of money donated by well-wishers. But, to grow and develop the service, we need to increase income, to invest in new facilities and the maintenance of content.

Please make a donation - any amount will be appreciated - to help keep Artsin going. We now have a donations page where you can make a payment online using your debit or credit card or your PayPal account.

Reporter

Thomas Spinks joins the team as reporter, currently covering live music events but hopes to also work on comedy and news. Thomas is a student at DMU.

Literature Editor

Vijal Dave edits the Literature section of the magazine, covering content on writers, authors, poets and material concerned with the written arts.

Reporter

Welcome to Nick Furlong who joins the team as staff reporter. Nick has already penned some reviews of live gigs on the site and will be contributing interviews and write ups of live music and comedy gigs. Nick was formerly the drummer in Leicester band The Flamonics.

Dance Editor

Welcome to Sarah Healy who joins us as Dance Editor and Artist Liaison and Promotions Executive.

Sarah will be adding a lot of new content about dance in Leicester and will be working with our live music side. Sarah is doing Arts Management at DMU.

Information for venues and promoters

In order for us to cover live music, we need to get in to gigs free, as would most serious music journalists, newspaper reporters or anyone else from the press.

Given that we have to go to several gigs each week, it would cost us more than we could afford if we had to buy a ticket every time we wanted to cover a show or a band.

We therefore ask venues and promoters to treat us just like any other member of the press and give us free entry to shows.

We need to spend 2 or more hours at a show and then 2 more hours writing up the review. No one pays us for this service. If we want to send someone to a show to cover it, we will arrange that in advance. No one will turn up at the door claiming to be from Arts in Leicestershire and asking for free entry. Regular reporters will have press passes.

We do not charge venues or promoters to publicise their gigs on our listings, so we trust that we will not be asked to pay if we turn up at a show to write it up.

Arts in Leicestershire is a free webzine - an online magazine. There is no paper based equivalent. Arts in Leicestershire is an independently produced site. It is not in any way associated with a third party organisation (e.g. it is not part of any local authority, The Arts Council, etc) and receives no funding, other than a small amount of advertising revenue. It is confined to the City of Leicester and County of Leicestershire.

Arts in Leicester promotes artists, musicians and entertainers.

New policy on gigs listings

When we started our gigs list, we planned to cover all gigs at all venues. Several months later, we find we are unable to do this because the task is far too overwhelming. We spend several hours per week updating the gigs list and it changes pretty much on a daily basis. The gigs list alone is equivalent to over 28 pages of A4.

So now, we have a more workable policy. This is that we will list selected gigs at all major live music venues: The Firebug, Leicester Square, Leicester University, The Loaded Dog, Loughborough University, The Pavilion, The Shed, Sumo and any smaller venue that sends us a request to list gigs they are putting on.

We will also list most gigs being played by major bands. We will list a gig if a Leicester band asks us to. We monitor top bands and add their gigs as much as possible.

Even though our list is selective, we still feel that it is unique and the best available listing for live music in Leicester/shire.

We do not usually cover gigs, shows or concerts at major venues such as The De Montfort Hall or Curve. We consider that these venues have websites that are easily found and have huge marketing budgets, which the smaller venues do not.

Mission Statement

Arts in Leicestershire is a web site and online web magazine (webzine) which sets out to cover the whole spectrum of arts and entertainment in Leicester and the county of Leicestershire.

It's goal is to provide, for the benefit of the general public, the best quality online portal which has constantly updated information on all aspects of the arts, including

• Music of all kinds, particularly live music
• The visual arts, including painting, art photography and creative graphic design
• The written word: novels, poetry, creative writing, authors
• Theatre, drama, plays, stage performance, dance
• Entertainment, shows, gigs, concerts, festivals

The magazine style element of the site is intended to provide readers with a regular coverage of the subject matter through the publication of news, feature articles, reviews, reports and topical debate.

Editorial Advisory Panel

An editorial advisory panel has been set up in order to monitor, extend and maintain the quality, scope and coverage of the content of this site. Experts from a variety of disciplines have been invited to join the panel, in order to ensure that there is a good cross section of advice about the the various artistic communities represented in this site.

The remit of the Panel is to advise the Editor on the planning and implementation of the site and its content.

Members of the panel:

Aisha Kibibi, The Leicester African Caribbean Arts Forum

Alex Van Roose (Rooster), The Heroes

Nicholas Dunn, Managing Director, Horus Music

Connor Evans, Weekend Schemers

Tim Hill, Outsider Promotions

The webzine also has a small group of reviewers who have volunteered to attend gigs and write reviews or to listen to CDs or other recordings and write reviews of them. We are keen to recruit more reviewers and subject editors. They are not paid for the time they give to writing reviews.

About Arts in Leicestershire

Hello. I am Trevor Locke, the editor of Arts in Leicestershire. I created this web site because there was a need to offer a one-stop-shop for information about arts and entertainment in Leicester and Leicestershire. Many other web sites attempt this remit but none of them really succeed in bringing together this wide array of information into one site.

This web site was launched on Sunday 4th September 2005. Designed and developed by local web designers, the site has grown into a comprehensive portal for anything to do with the arts and entertainment in the city and county.

This is an independent site; it is not funded by public grants. It attempts to cover its costs through commercial advertising. Independence allows us freedom of expression and the capability of providing a varied mixture of material for the benefit of our readers.

Music of all kinds, pictorial arts, theatre, entertainments, shows, gigs, festivals ... there is so much that Leicester city and the county of Leicestershire has to offer. Our diverse and vibrant community is rich in talented musicians and artists, whose work makes this city such a great place to live.

Whereas the site was created as a web site; it's content has now developed into being a webzine: a magazine that is delivered totally online but which has many of the features of a traditional, paper-based magazine, such as, news, feature articles, reviews, an editorial.

Content is not however published periodically (e.g. weekly). Content is edited and uploaded on a daily basis, so the site is continually changing, at least, as far as its most active pages are concerned.

The site requires many hours of dedicated content editing each week, with listings requiring updates every day. I don't run the site to make money and in fact it hardly covers it overhead costs. Some income is derived from advertising but hardly enough to cover the server fees.

Some businesses and organisations support the web site because, like me, they believe that it has potential and plays a useful role in providing information about the arts in our local area. The site does not attract any grants or public funding but a few sponsors have been happy to support it and for that I am extremely grateful.

I am also very thankful for the help provided by the many people who submit details of shows, events and gigs and who write reviews about them.

I am always on the look out for people who want to contribute to the site, either just because they want to share their pictures, information or writing with others, or if they want to gain experience for their CV. See our vacancies page.

Trevor Locke
Editor

May 2008