All That Happened At Eurovisions: The ESC Academic Conference Written by Ben Robertson on June 21, 2023 | 1 Comment

Eurovisions, the Eurovision Academic Conference, began its sixth edition this year in Liverpool. This two-day Conference is now a stable of the circus that follows wherever the Eurovision Song Contest takes place, providing an opportunity for Eurovision researchers to meet not only each other but also the wider Song Contest community.

This year the theme of the conference was ‘Representing oneself and the other: How Eurovision is shaping the perception of countries and culture‘. This of course was a topic that featured heavily in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest given the United Kingdom’s hosting on behalf of Ukraine.

After the traditional Eurovisions sing-a-long to ‘Te Deum’ the conference began with a talk by Volodymyr Sheiko, Managing Director of the Ukrainian Institute. An organisation that exists to “create opportunities for Ukraine to interact and co-operate with the rest of the world”. EuroFestival, the Fringe-like plethora of additional activities here in Liverpool was co-ordinated as a collaboration between his organisation and the British Council in partnership with the City of Liverpool.

A Respectful Programme

Volodymyr spoke about the way he had to create the programme in a “delicate” manner, one that made reference to the war taking place but to do so in a manner which was at the same time “not too grim”. The results of this, and the rest of Liverpool’s hosting of Eurovision he believes “does justice” to Ukraine, commenting that he has been “surprised it has worked so well” to showcase Ukrainian culture thousands of miles from its borders.

One of the questions to Volodymyr at the conference was to reflect on Ukraine’s success in the Eurovision Song Contest and especially for doing so with three different winning entries this century that in their own ways have clear influences from the regional culture in Ukraine. His reflections were that this was in part due to the “colonial domination” that Ukraine felt when it was a part of the Soviet Union, reducing Ukrainian cultural expression to only “remnants of folklore”. Yet these folklore elements kept strong to Ukrainian identity have been now very proudly integrated into their modern music to create music that transcends borders and still has that clear Ukrainian element.

Short, Sharp, Science

Following after this on Tuesday was the proceedings at this year’s Science Slam, where eight different early-career researchers briefly talked through their presentation concepts to the audience before engaging in conversation about their research. The first panel of Ben Robertson, Lauryn Bell, Lizzie King and Mayukha Pillay had discussions about the balance of accessibility surrounding the Eurovision Song Contest, following Maykha’s research about how sounds can assist individuals with sensory overstimulation with eating, and Lizzie King’s discussion about the importance of urban green spaces. Suggestions were given about different adaptations that could be implemented in a Eurovision setting, such as increased accessibility and sensory rooms that could accommodate fans with different neurodivergent conditions.

The panel also discussed songwriting camps, and the balance between artistic practice in a pre-planned way and one with more spontaneity. This followed on from Lauryn Bell’s research about such artistic practice, and the need for artists to create a common space to be artistically free to dare to create to their full potential.

The second set of four Science Slam participants were Anna Hill, Felix Häring, Freya Field and Kevin Quigley. Both Anna Hill’s presentation on brand management and Freya Field’s speech about visual design did inspire discussions about the branding of this year’s Contest and the reasons why different Song Contests have had different branding to tell different messages for each nation. A further topic point that came up was about the perception of the Eurovision Song Contest within different nations, partly inspired by Felix Häring’s research about the post-Yugoslav nations but also to compare and contrast that to the United Kingdom where Eurovision has been on a national resurgence.

The eventual winners of the Science Slam were Freya Field and Kevin Quigley for their presentations.

What Do We Do Now?

To conclude the first day of Eurovisions, Karen Fricker organised a roundtable discussion called “What’s the next big thing in Eurovision studies?” Three different Eurovision researchers presented their findings to the audience. Ivan Raykoff gave a detailed presentation, supported by clips, of the identity that is demonstrated within the competing entries of the All For One Caribbean, effectively in format a Song Contest for the Caribbean region. He concluded that the three season-long show “did not contribute to Caribbean unity as much as some of the organisers had hoped”, and perhaps this was due to the differing needs of the nations and the role of deeper cultural differences within the region.

Raykoff was followed by Paul David Flood from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in the United States. He discussed the expansion of Eurovision and the attempted projects around the world including the American Song Contest. Paul explored the increase in Afro-Europeans competing in the Eurovision Song Contest, with a focus in particular on how Ukraine and Sweden have been increasingly represented by such artists in recent years. Yet he noted that while their musical expression may be appreciated there is work to do to ensure that their voices are no longer “left silenced.”

Peter Rehberg from the University of Cincinnati gave a presentation entitled “Did Ru Paul Kill Eurovision?” Part of this included how Eurovision started to be rejuvenated in the past twenty years, arguing that it was the gay and queer fan culture of Eurovision that helped to “shape its rebranding in the 21st century.” New media, such as fan websites and social media channels, could help to generate a bigger interest in Eurovision without the need for the gatekeeping of traditional media, and noting how that continues today with the introduction of reaction videos and voting simulations as being perfect for the Contest. Indeed such content has “lead to an expression of the gay fanbase” it has also “lead to a de-gaying of the Song Contest” as the democratic nature of social media allows for all types of content creators to get an equal chance at the platform. In conclusion, he argues that we are in the midst of witnessing “another rebranding of Eurovision”.

Singing And Creativity

Attendees to the second day of Eurovisions began with the Resonate, Liverpool’s Music Education hub, standing outside the entrance for a short open-air concert. Their choir had combined with a local Ukrainian children’s choir to perform English and Ukrainian language songs as people arrived. This was a part of one of the city’s EuroLearn projects, where grants have been awarded to local educational institutions in and around Liverpool to celebrate all things Eurovision.

The children’s choir greeting attendees to Day Two of Eurovisions (Photo: Ben Robertson, ESC Insight)

The first guest speaker was Rebekah Okpoti, an academic from Liverpool Hope University. Stop The War: Solidarity With Performing Arts is the name of her book that is coming up later this year. This will document her research following the difficulties and challenges of Ukrainian creatives to still create despite the invasion from Russia.

This led into the first of three round table discussions. The first discussion focused on Representation in Eurovision, and included Elen Rhys from Welsh broadcaster S4C and Martin Isherwood, Head of Music at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. As one may expect much of the discussion that followed focused on Wales’ participation, and about how they fought to represent themselves on the Eurovision stage at Choir and Junior while the UK was not active through the BBC.

There we heard much about the cultural importance and the successful platform for Wales that Junior Eurovision and Eurovision Choir has been. While Wales’ participation fee was less than what the UK would pay through the BBC, the benefit to the Welsh broadcaster was the element of being able to produce something of national pride, that showed people the Welsh language and culture, “educating people [in Europe]” about Wales as a nation. While there was a significant cost, the spin-off of holding a competition to find an act for in particular Junior Eurovision and make programming following each step of the journey was a benefit of participation.

Both Elen and Martin discussed the issues of representation on a British basis. Elen bemoaned how the Welsh language has never got anywhere close to getting a chance to represent the nation on a United Kingdom level. This is despite the organisation of the annual Can i Gymru competition that has run since 1969 and was intended in its creation as an eventual National Final for Wales.

Martin Isherwood’s reflections on representation had a more British focus. He did support the Welsh broadcaster’s view that a federal selection process, either through a National Final of one song/region or being given rights to enter on a rotational basis, would be more fair and would be more in keeping with the mood of the four nations and England’s regions today. However his Eurovision foray has also made him question the fairness of the competition for the United Kingdom, after all he was a songwriter on the UK’s first nil points entry ‘Cry Baby’.

Citing “technical errors” and the “political tide” as factors that went against the United Kingdom that year, Martin bemoans what he sees as the reality that the UK is “not flavour of the month in Europe” as a continuing factor for their poor form this century.

Following that was the second roundtable discussion about the situation this year, and the difficulties of hosting Eurovision on behalf of another nation. Volodymyr Sheiko joined the conference once more alongside Oksana Skybinska, Ukrainian Head of Delegation at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Oksana ws incredibly complementary about the “wonderful co-operation” in the production as well as the hospitality and openness of Liverpool to accommodate Ukraine into the programme this year, which they believe is “exemplary”.

Ukraine at the moment is “sensitive”, Oksana continues, and despite the invasion the “attention to Eurovision has been very high since last May” and that this year the Ukrainian broadcaster has sent extra teams to the Contest to cover the fringe activities surrounding Liverpool’s hosting to feed back to those back in Ukraine, for which people are “very appreciative”.

Liverpool’s success as a host city and the reasons behind that were discussed by Kevin McManus from Culture Liverpool and Ngunan Adamu, a local BBC journalist and member of the BBC’s Eurovisioncast team. Kevin believed that Liverpool’s strength in taking on this challenge not only to host but to compassionately do so on behalf of Ukraine was in part because of Liverpool’s long history as a city of immigration. This gave a “unique understanding” to the city’s residents about the need to club together to show the welcome that Ukraine and Europe desired. Furthermore he drew synergies from Liverpool’s successful bid to the European Capital of Culture in 2008, as that process and the benefits of that was something eminently relatable for the local population.

The final panel for the conference was called “Measuring the impact of large scale events”, with a focus on the hosting of mega events of which of course the Eurovision Song Contest is one great example. Catherine Baker from the University of Hull spoke about “Eurovision’s expanding footprint” as the Song Contest continues to grow in scale as the demand from fans to be a part of the festival increases. She will be one of the researchers investigating the soft power impact of this year’s hosting in Liverpool.

The panel discussed how much of the planning for such large-scale events is also about expectation management. David Atkinson, also of the University of Hull, spoke about the need to avoid “conflicting roles” with different organisations stepping on each other’s toes. Furthermore, many of his findings suggested that the key to success is communication, keeping people on board and sharing understanding and best practices from previous examples to start the planning process.

He advocates for any host city next year to implement a top-down approach, to lead by example to preach the importance of a “common purpose” to engage stakeholders to the event, and to “find something unique that people already believe in”. That unique selling point to make hosting Eurovision more than just the Song Contest itself is seen as the key to a successful bid and hosting thereafter.

The Eurovisions Academic Conference was live streamed, and the videos of which can be found below. The stage is set for the 7th edition of Eurovisions to take place in Sweden next year!