Category Archives: Blog

You Are The Media Creator Day has been growing since its inaugural year in 2022 as a rebooted replacement to the former YATM Conference. In 2023 it added Failed Nights to the programme, the Wednesday evening before Thursday’s main event. In 2024 the after party and sea swimming were made official fixtures. This year Creator Day became CreatorContinueContinue reading “YATM Creator Day 2025 (and other event stories)”

Thank you to the team at Why Small Business Matters and Northumbria University for having me and guest host Rachel Clarke on the latest episode of their podcast to talk about employee ownership. I share the Grapevine journey to EO, adventures we’ve had in our two years since our transition, inspiration we’ve taken from Salad,ContinueContinue reading “Why Small Business Matters podcast”

It looked like I may have a space of a few weeks without any shows. There was one I’d pencilled in as a possibility, knowing it would likely be a solo excursion. Then, a couple of other events found their way to me. At the tail end of April I accompanied Ed Shaw to seeContinueContinue reading “Glorious Sunset”

Yesterday my colleague Daisy and I spoke to the Dorset Chamber Future Leaders group about employee ownership as an emerging industry trend, how we’ve embraced it at Grapevine since 2023 and some of the other initiatives we’re supporting to explore what ‘good’ business means in our changing world. Image credit: Dominic Arthurs For us, andContinueContinue reading “Future Leaders guest talk”

This week I got to see the iconic punk band, Descendents playing in Bournemouth. They were more or less done with regular touring when I got into them around the time of their 2004 release Cool To Be You. The idea that they’d be playing 20 minutes from my house, 21 years later was inconceivable.  ThisContinueContinue reading “The proud, the few, Descendents”

This week our business partner Gamma, presented Grapevine with the award for ‘Marketing Team of the Year’! As a small business, our marketing budgets are limited. In recent years we have adopted a more relationship building based approach to our marketing and communications activity that leverages our most important asset as an employee owned business,ContinueContinue reading “Marketing team of the year”

Today marks two years since Grapevine transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust. We celebrated last Thursday, with our annual ‘Co-owners’ meeting, looking back on our last financial year and sharing plans for 2025, followed by drinks and pizza from Da Mario.In addition to the experience in-house as an employee owned business, a big part ofContinueContinue reading “2nd anniversary of employee ownership”

February was a busy month and included three gigs, running at almost one per week, bringing the 2025 total to a respectable five so far. First up were Bowling For Soup at the BIC. A venue almost four times the size of the one I saw them play at their supposed height 21 years ago. We spentContinueContinue reading “A hangover you do deserve”

I don’t need an excuse to visit a brewery… I have an archive full of them, but I’ll always welcome one, even if it’s first thing in the morning, as was the case yesterday for the latest Dorset Ambassadors event. I’ve been over to Hall & Woodhouse’s Blandford Brewery before, but this was my first timeContinueContinue reading “Hall & Woodhouse visit”

Thank you to Rachel Clarke and Martyn Polkinghorne for inviting me to join a session with the ‘Help to Grow’ management course cohort and talk about my personal experiences with developing, vision, values and company culture at Grapevine.I had to share this great quote from Javier Bajer at the EOA Annual Conference which has beenContinueContinue reading “Help to Grow guest talk”

My 2025 year of gigs has started with the earliest first show in the calendar since 2008. Two under the belt and three more to come before the end of February is a strong start and we could be into personal best territory by the time the year is done. Not only was it an earlyContinueContinue reading “It’s cold out there”

It’s a new year, 2025, or is it 1997 again? It is every Friday night in my house as I continue to follow the Top of the Pops repeats on BBC4. Some of you are probably fed up of my regular updates about who just made their debut on the show, or who was numberContinueContinue reading “Across sound and time”