Brighton is a city at the South Coast of England. It is known for its beautiful seafront and the amazing small alleys with pubs and small stores. Once a year Brighton turns into the Mecca of the European music scene. The Great Escape Festival – Europes leading music festival for new music – takes over the city and brings the hottest new acts from all over to the local stages.
Also this year a group of TAMK students was allowed to be part of this great experience and travelled for five days to Great Britain.
OUR THE GREAT ESCAPE - BRITAIN DIARY
WEDNESDAY, 13.05.2015
It is around noon when we leave our beloved Tampere direction Helsinki airport and early evening when we land in London/Gatwick and the country of the Queen and Fish & Chips. After we get our luggage (and yes, this time nothing got lost!), we continue our travelling to Brighton. Our hotel is located next to the seafront and offers a great view to the Sussex Coast. Also Peppiina - who was coming from Leeuwarden/Netherlands - and Sami - who was coming from Manchester - found their way to Brighton. After this exhausting day we spend an amazingly delicious dinner together in a local Italian restaurant where we need to face our first two challenges: 1. How the hell do these British Pounds look like & 2. The bill can’t be paid separately! It takes a while to get the problems solved but we learn our lesson and finish the evening in a nice British pub.
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| Our hotel |
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| Our view when we stepped out off the hotel |
THURSDAY, 14.05.2015The Great Escape starts for us in the late morning when we pilgrimage to the Brighton Dome where we get our Delegate passes and Wristbands. Right after that we find ourselves in the first panels about Music Business. Beside the countless seminars, The Great Escape also offers a lot of possibilities for networking and meeting other delegates. In the evening the showcases take their place all over the city. Late at night we finish our first – already really inspiring – day at the TGE! |
| The Great Escape Programm |
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| Interesting panels about the Music Business |
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| The group at one of the countless TGE parties |
FRIDAY, 15.05.2015
The Friday is covered with interesting listening sessions about music/artist marketing and record deals. Within the day we meet people from the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg and Music Finland. In between we surely see great performances of new upcoming acts from all over the world in the coolest locations of Brighton. Even a church is used as an event venue and so it happens that some of us are able to see a great performance by Yosi Horikawa. Probably one of the best TGE show is the late evening performance by Turbowolf. Packed with a lot of energy and Rock’n’Roll, the guys fascinate the audience in The Hope & Ruin. |
| Performance by Yosi Horikawa |
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| Peppiina and Meri ready for the next TGE day |
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| Day Planning |
SATURDAY, 16.05.2015The days are running quite fast in England and finally the sun also finds its way to the South Coast. After the daily panels, we decide to discover Brighton a bit more. After a walk through the Royal Pavillion park, we visit the Brighton Pier which is one of the highlights of the city and is actually a huge penny arcade. At the very end of the Pier you can even find a small amusement park with rollercoasters. We spend the dinnertime in Brighton’s great American Diner where the burgers are surfaced with almost a whole Avocado and finish our last festival day with great performances by Bad Breeding, Steve’n’Seagulls, The St Pierre Snake Invasion and Mew. |
| The Royal Pavillion |
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| British people enjoying the sun |
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| The Brighton Pier |
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| Bighton's Seafront |
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| View from the Brighton Pier |
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| Burger Time |
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| The American Diner |
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| The group enjoying the sunset |
SUNDAY, 17.05.2015
After all these amazing days all of us are utterly tired. We still did not get used to the left-hand traffic but to the beautiful weather in Brighton. Before we leave to London/Gatwick to head back to Finland, we conquer Brighton’s shopping mall.
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| Brighton's pretty small alleys |
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| Brighton |
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| Brighton Seafront |
The Great Escape was an amazing experience for all of us and still on the way back home we reflect the last impressive days:
Meri: “AWESOME!”
Mikko: “I really enjoyed our trip to Brighton! Most of the bands were great and I got a lot of new thoughts from the seminars. Our group was also a great one!“
Peppiina: “I enjoyed the trip a lot. I felt that there was a lot of important people from the business and the opportunities for meeting and networking with ppl were pretty good. I found the seminars really interesting and almost all of them were easy to follow. The bands and artists we saw were great, although I found it very hard to choose which ones to see since there were so many interesting options. Overall experience was great and it's nice that we had the opportunity to see how TGE is.“
Sami: „I personally got much inspiration from hearing about music business in much more practical perspective than this far.”
Ville: “Good trip, had fun.“
Text: Carolin Büttner
Photos: Mikko, Carolin, Sami
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