Help Musicians Scotland: Do It Differently fund with Stina Tweeddale
Honeyblood's Stina Tweeddale talks about the practical skills you need when you're starting out as a musician as we introduce Help Musicians' Do It Differently fund
As we delve into the fourth feature as part of our media partnership with Help Musicians Scotland, following on from conversations with BMX Bandits’ Duglas T. Stewart, Emma Pollock and Frightened Rabbit’s Grant Hutchison and Simon Liddell, this month’s video features Honeyblood’s Stina Tweeddale as we learn about Do It Differently. It's Help Musicians’ 360-degree fund for music creators which combines support to help nurture creativity, business development and health and wellbeing.
Watch the short film in the YouTube player below (click here if it's not displaying correctly). A spokesperson for Help Musicians Scotland has said: "We would like to thank Stina for sharing her experiences of working within the Scottish music industry and supporting the work we do here."
Tweeddale has been creating and making music professionally now for around five years, she explains in the video, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that she found out that Help Musicians existed after seeing a billboard at a festival. She explains how the organisation helped her friend and regular collaborator Carla J. Easton fund a trip to record an album in Canada. She also explains what life is like as an independent professional musician, where she talks about the sacrifices she's had to make over the years – "I missed two weddings" – and details the kinds of practical skills outwith writing, creating and performing music that the Do It Differently fund can help with.
“To be a professional musician, it doesn’t mean that you’re just performing and writing songs, you need to be able to manage your books, be an accountant, be your own manager… be your own booker,” she explains. “At the beginning you need to learn the basics of all these things so then when you do get to the stage when you do have a manager and you do have a booker you know that they’re doing a good job. You have to be a jack of all trades, which can be really daunting, and if you don’t know how to do those things then it’s very difficult, especially at the start when you’ve got no one to help you.”
Since launching in 2018, the Do It Differently fund has been awarded to a whole host of projects across a multitude of genres from all corners of the UK, with up to £3,000 available to individuals or bands with up to six members to help with creative development, and a further £2,000 available for their business development and health and wellbeing services.
The creative development can be used to help cover recording, releasing music and touring and can be put towards time to create, paying for session musicians, visual marketing and merchandise production amongst other things. For business development, Help Musicians can arrange mentoring sessions with industry experts to help with funding and business planning, digital strategies and more, while for health and wellbeing Help Musicians recognise the emotional and physical pressures that come with being a musician and they offer a range of services which includes their Musicians' Hearing Health Scheme and Music Minds Matter, offering around the clock advice and a listening ear for people in the industry. The fund will also offer opt-in access to the Healthy Touring Programme in association with the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine (BAPAM).
The Do It Differently fund will reopen in September 2019. To apply for the Do It Differently fund visit: doitdifferentlyfund.org.uk
Based in Glasgow, and covering all of Scotland, Help Musicians Scotland is part of Help Musicians UK, a charity that has been running for close to a century. Investing more than £600,000 a year, they help artists via a breadth and depth of services, funds and grants that focus on mental, physical, financial and career health. Help Musicians offer a lifetime of support when musicians need it most.
You can keep up-to-date with their latest news and announcements by following Help Musicians Scotland on Twitter and Facebook, and by signing up to their mailing list.
Contact the Help Musicians Scotland office:
0141 404 9502
scotland@helpmusicians.org.uk
If you work in music and are struggling to cope, or know someone who is, get in touch with Music Minds Matter, Help Musicians UK’s around-the-clock listening ear service and support line dedicated to everyone who works in the music industry. Contact Music Minds Matter on 0808 802 8008 or email: mmm@helpmusicians.org.uk