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Hi all, Please see below for a petition that may of interest to IASPM-UK-I members, especially those who attend or are involved in promoting small-scale live music and dance club events. The text is taken from the petition's website: -- Under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, councils can designate areas within which people must buy a licence to hand out leaflets. Nearly a third of councils now restrict leafleting, and licences are prohibitively expensive. These rules have been catastrophic for theatres, village halls, comedy clubs and small nightclubs, which rely on leafleting, but cannot afford such fees. A flyer ban in Leicester Square caused the collapse of several comedy nights. One Women’s Institute was threatened with a fine for handing out leaflets about its art exhibition. Oxford student societies were asked to pay £100 a month for leafleting. Leafleting is a key civic freedom, with a long tradition in this country, and should not be restricted without good reason. Litter can be dealt with through the proper provision of litter bins and other common-sense measures, rather than restrictions on people’s rights to use public space. The 2005 Act already provides exemption for political and religious leafleting, or leafleting on behalf of a charity. The Government should amend the Act, to provide an additional exemption for leafleting for small-scale cultural and community events. -- There is actually a reform bill due for a first reading in the House of Lords in May, and the more people who sign the petition the better its chances are of being passed and thereby exempting music and other cultural events, hopefully making it easier to promote local music scenes. IASPM isn't taking an official position on this, so feel free to make up your own mind, but I thought you might want to know about it. You can sign the petition here: www.tinyurl.com/flyerban Best wishes, Matt Brennan Chair, IASPM-UK-I -- ========================================== Dr Matt Brennan Reid School of Music Edinburgh College of Art University of Edinburgh Alison House 12 Nicolson Square Edinburgh EH8 9DF United Kingdom e-mail: [log in to unmask] web: http://edinburgh.academia.edu/MattBrennan/About Live Music Exchange: http://livemusicexchange.org/ The 2012-2013 Times Higher Education World University Rankings' Arts and Humanities list places the University of Edinburgh as 11th in the world.