Neil McSweeney
Department of Music
Senior University Teacher
Departmental Director of One University
Full contact details
Department of Music
Jessop Building
Leavygreave Road
Sheffield
S3 7RD
- Profile
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I lead the music industries teaching in the Department of Music and am also responsible for Employability and Engaged Learning. This means I teach across undergraduate modules such as Work in Music, and Community, Music & Education and contribute to the MA in Music Management, for which I was programme director from 2017 to 2023. In addition, I often deliver sessions on the undergraduate Popular Music Studies modules and will teach the new Songwriting module on the BMus too.
I enjoy supporting student-led co-curricular projects such as those organised by the department label Octagon Records, which I helped to set up, or the music education projects co-ordinated by Music in the City. I am one of the convenors of the Department’s Board of Collaborators which provides a space for conversations between the department and the wider music sector in the region.
- Research interests
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Through my work in the music industries and my scholarship in the department, I am engaged in the development and maintenance of effective, resilient infrastructure for grass-roots, independent music (specialist as well as mainstream). I am particularly interested in exploring the specific role of smaller independent risk-taking intermediaries (such as record labels, management companies, venues etc) and the different forms of value generated by the grass-roots music sector at a local level. I am also interested in the relationships between songwriting practice, placemaking, and health.
I am affiliated with the transdisciplinary research centre Muses Mind Machine.
- Publications
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Performances
- Holler at Bamford.
- Holler Doncaster.
- Holler at The Welly. The Wellington, Billingham, Tyne & Wear.
- Holler at Bamford.
- Professional activities and memberships
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Outside my role at the university, I am a founder director of Hudson Records Ltd and Hudson Unearth CIC. These organisations have a track record of securing private capital and arts funding to deliver award-winning music-centred cultural projects of various kinds involving artists from across the UK and around the world. This ongoing direct contact with the music industries informs my teaching and curriculum development work.
My background is as a songwriter and musician with substantial experience of recording, touring and releasing music.
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.