Baltic Studios

Baltic x Behind This Wall – live on The Vinyl Factory today at 1pm!

Remember those halcyon days of the rule of 6? A few weeks ago Baltic (repped by Lewis fka DJ 6’6” Male) set up shop in our fav bar Behind This Wall to soundtrack a Sunday evening. A recorded snippet – which spans gentle popnotpop, crude dubby electronics, wiggy ‘art rock’ and a bit more – is being streamed over on The Vinyl Factory as part of their VFLive series today at 1pm. See ya in the digits 😊

A fortnight ago we put the day-to-day running of things on pause. We used the day to think about our place in relation to structural racism and how we should fight it. Although it shouldn't have taken a catalyst like the murder of George Floyd to get us here, we've now got the beginnings of a plan, which we thought we'd share.

As an immediate response, we've set aside £2,000 for donations to anti-racist causes. About £500 of this has already been split between over 60 US bail funds (the link is still in our bio – donate if you can). The rest will be split between UK-based anti-racist political campaigns and initiatives.

In the longer-term, we will:

**Establish a regular donation/fund to support Black music makers
**Use our social media to celebrate and share the work of Black artists
**Book more Black artists to play at our events
**Proactively seek to recruit Black people to work at Baltic
**Implement policies in our nonprofit activity at the studio to ensure that Black people are represented
**Use as many local, Black-run businesses in the supply and upkeep of the studio as possible

We're also thinking about how we can make the studio more accessible and inviting to Black producers, engineers and musicians. This requires more thought and we'd welcome any feedback or suggestions. For now, we plan to talk to Black music makers about what they want from a studio, and about how we can offer the space to emerging Black musicians.

We know there are likely to be things we've missed. Please get in touch if you have any ideas about how we can do better as a studio and events series. In the meantime we'll continue to develop these ideas and plan how we can support the movement. Solidarity and love!