Two events happened earlier this month that I hope help contextualise what I am about to cover.
The first was Rebellion Fringe, the run-up to Rebellion Festival, which is the major punk festival in Blackpool. This took place on Tuesday 4 August 2026. My punk band, This Future's Stupid (formerly Those Fucking Snowflakes), performed at Scream N' Shake, a horror-themed pub in Blackpool. Four acts performed that day — Rum Lad, King Laugh, ourselves, and Rave Against the Machine, in that order. It was an enjoyable set all around. A major highlight of the evening was that we, This Future's Stupid, were joined by Tom Robinson — as in, "Glad to be Gay," "2 4 6 8 Motorway," BBC 6Music, that Tom Robinson — on stage. I'll talk more about that in a separate article, hopefully. For now, enjoy these videos.
The second was that between Thursday 6 to Saturday 8 August 2026, I attended Ludo 2026, a ludomusicology* conference which is celebrating its 15th anniversary. That it happened in Ormskirk — in LANCASHIRE — is an extreme rarity, as there are enough observations that Lancashire is one of the many cultural notspots, dead zones, however you may call them. Preston, in particular, was so named by Blog Preston due to it being put on the Arts Council England priority list… due to a lack of arts and cultural activity. This conference was deeply enlightening from start to finish, covering a wide range of musical niches. I found it fulfilling in a way that I did not with, say, the likes of Develop: Brighton, in that it involved deeper discussions of music, technicalities, compositional choices and tropes, and their wider cultural and societal implications. As an interdisciplinary composer and musician, this sang to my soul.
On the last day of Ludo 2026, regional games were covered in a talk delivered by ludomusicologist Raynor Nugent, and a particular example she mentioned was Thank Goodness You're Here!, a game that captured the imaginations of players both locally and worldwide. This prompted a question about what needed to happen in order for more such games to be seen, and this, in turn, prompted me to report with the situation on the ground from Preston, a perceived dead zone.
Paraphrasing myself, I talked about how Preston only recently became a priority funding area for Arts Council England — as of late June, in fact; this I can confirm from a direct conversation with Tony Rigg, the chairperson of the Lancashire Musicians' Association. I spoke about how, barring Ludo 2026 happening in Ormskirk, hardly any game development events ever happened in Lancashire, and that we had to travel to Manchester or Liverpool or Leeds to partake in burgeoning game development scenes. I spoke about the (then) ongoing Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, and how that is a niche event that is partaken of by international audiences, but also how that same enthusiasm is not shown for music or the arts in general in Lancashire. What I later spoke of with interested people is that Preston currently only has two main serviceable venues: the Ferret and the New Continental.
That's it. The Preston Guild Hall, once graced by acts such as ACDC, Queen, Elton John, and David Bowie, among a long LONG list of others, is looking to be demolished due to the presence of RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) in the walls and ceiling of the performance area.
It follows, therefore, that any talk of "levelling up the North" or "wanting to hear more regional stories" is met with cynicism on our end because, despite well-intentioned discourses on this exact subject, we'd been met with silence, or with lack of investment or interest. Apart from a few pockets of activity, musicians tend to feel isolated. In the case of Preston, it is not helped by the fact that Preston City Council has been known to try to ape what Manchester and Liverpool are doing right, instead of trying to come up with a uniquely Prestonian solution. Whatever the case may be, any presentation of problems affecting perceived cultural dead zones in the North are immediately perceived as attacks or grievances, Northerners stepping out of line instead of being grateful for the scraps that fall from the tables of more affluent regions. I myself immediately got that vibe after talking about the situation on the ground in Preston. Hardly anyone, except for two people, spoke about it with me afterwards. It is a deeply isolating feeling.
A Swiss fan who encountered us (This Future's Stupid) and Tom Robinson, said upon meeting the latter by chance, a phrase that I wish could be genuinely uttered by the rest of the country about their own home regions: „Geschichte, die nur in Blackpool passieren!“ (tr.: "Stories that happen only in Blackpool!)
And yet, it is not a sentiment shared by many Blackpudlians, and especially not outside of Rebellion Festival. Blackpool suffers one of the worst levels of mental wellbeing in all of the UK. I personally know Blackpudlians who have moved to relatively more prosperous areas like Preston because they perceived their home to be, in their words, “a shithole.”
Preston has birthed such acts as Ken Nicol of Steeleye Span, and Jessica Taylor of Liberty X. But we ourselves hardly know about them. Culture is fragmented; there is no monoculture anymore. We have so many different niches and fandoms to join, and fame and renown are relative. To demonstrate that fact, the Guardian recently wrote an article about the #1 chart single that hardly anyone has ever heard.
But that said, we are also not empowered to partake of our own regional musical culture in the same way other areas might be. The lack of advance notice given to us about cultural events happening in our neck of the woods lends to an impression that these events are pop-up, ad-hoc, and not worth attending in the same way as a heavily advertised event such as Manchester Pride or an Oasis concert. Things don't take as long to sink in, and we don't have time to be encouraged to love the culture we can produce. We are suffering from a dearth of venues. The recent increased funding for arts venues still can't reverse the closures that have happened over the years. We need new spaces, and they're not forthcoming. We are suffering from poor spending power. Pints and merch can be expensive, and that is a direct consequence of the price rises we have seen in the past few years. Many of us have to work several jobs to make ends meet, and this sharply reduces the amount of time to dedicate to cultural appreciation. Some areas are straight up unsafe for entire groups of people in light of recent spikes in racist attacks, the EHRC guidance against trans people using the bathrooms of their gender, the recent demonisation of disabled people in the media and the public sphere, etc. There are visible parts of the centre of Preston that are run-down. We are struggling to find reasons to encourage people to, you know, actually visit Preston. And no, the Lancashire Encounter does not count. Hardly anyone outside of Lancashire actually knows about it.
While I can't speak for areas outside Preston, I can only speculate that similar problems are being faced by areas around us.
And if we can't do at least those things right, then we haven't a snowball's chance in hell of making culture happen in this general region. Things happen when they're empowered to happen. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
And for all the cynicism that we show towards attempts to level up the North, the only custodians of Northern culture are we ourselves. We, too, must do our duty.
The Lancashire Musicians' Association is going on tour, with a bunch of networking events held across towns and cities in Lancashire with the aim of putting a cultural infrastructure in place. I plan on attending as many of these events as I can, in the hopes of reaching out to people in my own county and helping build something here. Every industry needs its angels, whatever their purpose may be. We only get better by building each other up.
We are at the cusp of a collapse of the way things are run now. Now's our chance to build better.
*Ludomusicology is the study and analysis, typically academic, of game audio and its derivative formats, and any other game music e.g. tabletop game music.
