Avenham Park and the New Continental will pay host to the 22nd Un-Convention – a series of music events and conferences aimed at grass roots artists, writers, labels and entrepreneurs.

Taking place on June 17, the main day’s activities will be based around panel discussions and workshops while the Continental will host a series of live acts in the evening.

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Jeff Thompson, the organiser of Un-Convention, said: “The idea is to create an environment where people who are finding new ways to publicise their work and their music can come together and exchange ideas.

“We could just bring in a load of people from the industry, but it’s much better to get people in a room who are all actually doing it.

“At one point the music industry was very impenetrable. That’s changed a lot now, people like Soundcloud and Ditto Music allow you to publish and publicise music anywhere using their services as well as social media”.

Unconvention began in Salford in October 2008. It now has events taking place in India, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia and USA – each event carrying the overall Un-Convention ethos, but each driven by it’s local grassroots music scene and infrastructure.

Discussion at the Preston event will be based around musicians building sustainable careers, developing live opportunities, as well as a specific look at the scene in and around Lancashire.

“It’s a really great event for anyone involved in music” says Jeff. “We got Peter Hook to speak at one of our past events – but it wasn’t about his time in Joy Division, but about the new opportunities for up and coming artists in the radically different music industry of today”.

You can pick up free tickets for Unconvention Preston here. We’re also looking for people to cover the event with writing, photography, audio or video, so if you’re interested please get in touch at joseph(at)blogpreston(dot)co(dot)uk.

Un-convention Factory from Un-convention on Vimeo.