People we've helped

Tees Music Alliance

Category

Arts and media

Tees Music Alliance (TMA) is a not-for-profit industrial and provident society that provides a range of services and facilities for the benefit of musicians and their audiences.

Based in Stockton-on-Tees in North East England, it runs a recording studio, a live music venue and a music development programme for local bands. Every year it puts on a major outdoor music festival. TMA has been going for 25 years, starting as Middlesbrough Music Collective before it changed its name in 2006. It now employs eight permanent staff and has a number of casual workers it can call on for events.

It has always relied on volunteers and provides them with first class opportunities to develop a wide range of music industry skills, including sound engineering, event management and customer service. The management committee of TMA are also volunteers.

Director Paul Burns said: “We’ve grown organically rather than following a set plan. When we started in the late 80s it was a time of unemployment and recession and now we’re here again. We decided to contact the Hub for help with developing a business strategy and financial plan for changing times.”

For the first time this year TMA decided to charge entrance for its annual music festival. This had started in 1991 as a fringe event but had grown over the years into a major music festival.

“Contacting the Hub helped us to refocus our business operation in the light of the economic downturn.”
Paul Burns

TMA realised that it was no longer financially viable to run a ‘free’ festival and so rebranded it as the Stockton Weekender and sold tickets, although entrance on Sunday was still free. Paul said: “Going from a free event to a paid event was always going to be a hurdle, but we cleared it with room to spare. Numbers were down on previous years but we were expecting that. The people that came in were genuine music fans. It was fantastic given what we had to deal with in terms of the weather, which was horrendous!”

HOW WE HELPED

We provided business planning support and undertook a strategic review in order to determine the best direction for the business.
We helped to develop a funding strategy so TMA could access additional sources of income.
We provided marketing support in order to raise the profile of the enterprise.

Mike Berriman, the Hub adviser, said: “Tees Music Alliance has been around over 20 years and has achieved amazing things that a private business or local authority could not. They’ve achieved this because of the buy-in of local people and stakeholders.”