Back in 2007, Tom Smith, Charlie Stobbart and Kat Soutar founded MAP Charity. A Leeds-based, not-for-profit music and arts organisation, MAP has spent nearly two decades providing creative education to young people in the community who have difficulty accessing mainstream education. Prior to that Tom had already been thinking of starting a music venue that when not in use, would facilitate community and outreach work.
Cosmic Slop was born in 2009, driven by Tom’s belief that music can be a catalyst for social change. It’s a fundraising club night utilising the gallery space of Hope House (the building that MAP’s education programme is housed within) where the profits from the night were then fed back into MAP’s charitable work. The room houses a now fabled soundsystem that Tom began building himself prior to Cosmic Slop coming into being. Inspired by Jamaican soundsystem culture and the iconic systems of the New York ‘70s and ‘80s heydays, it was also driven by a simple desire to provide a level of sound he thought others weren’t achieving.
Stepping into that room, feels special - something that can’t be boiled down to the clarity, warmth, weight and absorbing feel of the soundsystem. This isn’t your run of the mill party; every element is thought out to make your experience as inviting as possible. From the friendly staff to the unpretentious and minimal lighting, the anything goes nature of the music, to the space you are given to dance even when it’s full.
It creates a level of respect from those that attend and those that DJ, with many of the scene’s biggest names supporting the cause. It’s a collective acknowledgment that this isn’t just a normal club night; there’s a greater meaning to it all. An energy that pulses through the dancefloor, knowing that one’s enjoyment here, helps give young people who are struggling in the mainstream avenues of education a different path in their learning.
At the start of the year we sat down with co-founder Tom Smith, to dig into the journey behind MAP, Cosmic Slop, their respective significance and what the future holds.
For the uninitiated, Cosmic Slop is the fundraising arm to MAP. Could you tell us a bit about MAP's work and how Slop first came about as an idea?
So myself, Charlie Stobbart and Kat Soutar were looking at setting up a project to help young people, teaching them arts and music. Before that, I was looking to set up a music venue and when we weren't using it as a music venue, we'd use it to do community work, education, youth work, outreach stuff.
Working alongside people who were already doing community work, as well as me, the idea became more focused on the education side of things. Partly out of necessity because to be allowed to do education with young people, you've got to have quite a high standard and it requires a lot of resource and effort to get to that standard. And then the music side of things became a fundraiser for that. So the priorities swapped over, from music being the main reason, to education being the main reason. I'm really glad of that because it provides a sense of balance and purpose to everything that we do now. It helps people really understand that music can help support progress in society, which is, I would say, the main reason for music.
Then we got hold of a building, we built some classrooms, and after we’d finished those we set about building a gallery space where we could do visual arts and also music events. We started using that for fundraisers. I think we did our first fundraiser in 2009, so the first Cosmic Slop was in 2009, and we did our first education classes in 2007.
Did you have a background in social educational side?
No. I did kind of production acoustics studies and whilst I was at university I wrote a course for doing an internet radio project and then off the back of that I got offered work in a local community centre doing arts projects for kids.
Pretty much the same sort of kids that we work with now, kids that are having difficulty accessing mainstream education. I was doing that from probably when I was 20 years old.
Then I set MAP up when I was about 24. You’ve got to set a charity up and then find a place for it. So setting it up can be followed by finding a home for it and that can take quite a while.
I built the sound system sort of in tandem with setting up the charity and I guess I was building the sound system as I was doing some of those community internet radio projects very early on before MAP.
The system is firstly an incredible sound system, but it's also pretty big. Did you always have in mind that you’d be able to find a space that would house it?
No, not really. I had it in storage for quite a long time before we found a place that was suitable. It was a real leap of faith to build it and store it. And then find a home for it years later really.
Did you just build it off your own back? But with the intention that obviously it would be used as a system for whatever project you were hoping to start.
I probably built the system from a bit more of an artistically driven perspective. When I built it, I didn't know we'd use it as the main fundraising tool for a charity. I just wanted to achieve a really lovely sound that I thought that other people weren't achieving.
And I was just very lucky with that process of choosing what I wanted to create. Being able to meet the right people that helped me build it, allowed me to learn what I need to learn. I look back and I feel very lucky that everything fell into place the way that it did, you know, in that sense.
Who were you using as like an inspiration for the build?
I can remember just looking at pictures of New York in the ‘70s and ‘80s and seeing the sound systems in the backgrounds of a lot of photos and just romanticising essentially about the heyday.
There was definitely a degree of idealisation, but there was also I guess, testimony from people about how good these things were and how good they sounded. And now looking at it, I guess they weren't lying. Like people saying, “the sound here was the best. The sound here was magical. There's nothing like it since. I haven't been anywhere like that for 20 years”. People say these sorts of things and I read it as someone who's 19 / 20 years old and I'm like, what? But there was first-hand evidence from people about what is possible, to create an environment like that. It turns out what they were saying was quite accurate. That way of doing things does have certain qualities to it.
Was there a lot of trial and error with it?
No and that's where luck comes into things, but I guess research as well. I've been saying to people who are asking for advice, I haven't had massive experience of trying lots of different stuff. I've just gone quite hard on one particular perspective or one particular solution, if you will.
I was just lucky enough to be doing it at a time when perhaps these skills weren't considered as valuable and they hadn't had a resurgence as much. People were exchanging information passionately, they were excited to share and they were excited to keep things alive. And now I feel that it's a bit more of a currency, it's all got a bit more financial value. I'm not saying back then the knowledge and information was completely worthless, but it didn't have financial value.
I learned a lot of stuff off the Wave Music Forum, which is François Kevorkian’s label, and had a huge community of people, including some key players in New York, who knew a lot about the way Richard Long used to do things, a lot about the way things were done at The Gallery. They were very passionate about that. People hadn't yet revisited that culture.
It's funny, I actually thought I learned a lot of stuff off of YouTube as well. Maybe more about joinery and tools, woodwork, equipment and electronics. It turns out that actually I must have learned most of it off forums, because YouTube hadn’t been invented when I built the sound system, which goes to show the memory play tricks, doesn't it?
But you know, I've always been a great believer in people learning what they want to, learning by themselves in a way. Individual peer-to-peer learning. Because I've been a big beneficiary of it. Not just learning from institutions. I wouldn’t say I was self-taught, I had a lot of support from people who were really keen to tell a young person who's excited about it, how to do things. But, there was no shortage of people who wanted to tell a young person who's really excited, not to fucking bother as well. I wanted to build speakers that were made in the ‘60s and there were people who were qualified to say this, like “why are you bothering me? There's nothing special about these speakers. Build something more modern”. And I'm glad I didn't listen to those people because they've obviously just got different ears.
Were there parties going on up North that inspired you, or did you think there was a gap in the market?
I didn't think about a gap in the market necessarily. I think I was really inspired by Electric Chair in Manchester in terms of combining music in an exciting way. There was no template, in terms of an audio template, for what I wanted to do. But I wasn’t setting out to capitalise on that. Looking back now, because of this audiophile resurgence that has taken place you could say, “oh, there was a real space for that”. But I just wanted to create a really high-fidelity, high-quality way of listening back to these records on the dancefloor and dancing to this music in a way that the music felt and sounded real.
Back then, when I was doing this, there was maybe Mancuso’s Loft parties, and I'd go and see Mancuso quite often. That was really inspiring. Even though the Slop system is quite different, it's got quite a lot of similarities as well. And of course, Plastic People in London was a massive inspiration.
In terms of MAP’s work, obviously you're working with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. What sort of things are you teaching them? It's quite broad across the arts, isn't it?
Yeah, so it’s art and design, visual arts, and then music production and digital media. So we get to teach quite a lot of stuff under that creative banner. It's quite a broad range. I'm certainly not teaching them how to build audiophile sound systems or how to cut dubplates.
And it’s focussed on kids that can't access mainstream education?
Yeah it’s kids having difficulty accessing mainstream education. They could be finding it so difficult that they don't access it or they could be just having difficulties on certain days. It can range from someone who hasn't been at school for three years, to someone who's just had difficulty when everyone goes and does their maths class or history class, and they've just got a problem with one day a week and it's quite minor.
It's not all kids from the same background of issues. There's a broad range of issues that prevent young people from attending school in the same way that most kids do.
Do they know that Cosmic Slop is the fundraising party to MAP?
They sort of do know that, but I don't know if you remember what it's like being 13 or 14. You didn't really have a concept of what nightclubs actually were in that sense. But I mean, I worked every day on the education programme. I used to be there every single day. I’m in the office less these days but still spend time running the events and working on our label Cosmic Slop Records. Back when I was helping teach the kids day in day out, they'd be like, “what's the point in doing this? There's no point. No one can make any money from music”. And I'd go, “come on then, let’s go” and we'd stand in the gallery space where we're doing the fundraising event at the weekend. And I'd say, look, we paid the rent at the weekend from doing what we're trying to teach you right now. We did it at the weekend and everybody got paid out of it. So don't tell me that's not real, you know.
That’s quite impactful for young people to see examples of professional creativity. The building's now full of that, because we've got workspaces for a range of professional creatives now, from people weaving fabrics and tapestries to people building stuff digitally, creating websites, illustrating, audio and video work and music studios. So there's a lot of examples of people earning a living within the arts for young people to see quite tangibly. That's quite inspiring because for a lot of young people it's not as useful if it's ‘do this, get a certificate, that certificate will come in handy in two years when you try and go to university’ or whatever. Some kids get this path, and they have faith in it and they trust educators who are telling them this. Some kids have the opposite and have a mistrust of educators and the system they've been in and they really need a different perspective on things and that's really what we've offered for nearly two decades in the education program.
Do you think that projects like MAP can be scaled up and be more prevalent in society? It always seems like the onus is on the collective to start these things from the ground up. For instance, with you having to fundraise to buy Hope Foundry alongside so many other issues, it always seems like it falls on the individual or collective rather than the government giving any help.
I think that's quite typical within a lot of community stuff, and I think some of the main difficulties are the challenges you've outlined there like “oh our buildings closing down that we rent, or we can't afford the rent or we've got to protect it from being turned into flats”. But you know there's also the difficulty of how does an organisation transcend the generations. I think organisations like MAP get set up by founders who are setting up something the way they think it should be done, and you as a founder are very passionate about that. You will find other people that are passionate, but I should think a lot of organisations end when those founders no longer have the ability to put in that level of energy.
So how do you find the next generation of people to carry on something? I think that's a particular challenge and we've been lucky enough to get people working for MAP who maybe come to Cosmic Slop as a dancer when they were 18 years old, or we've got teachers working for MAP in the education department who came as part of their work experience when they were studying. Then you get a sense that you can pass things on to another generation, but I do think that's probably the most significant challenge.
How would you set up an organisation like this and give it a lifespan of 20 years, 30 years, 40 years beyond one person's working lifespan really. How you get that intergenerational momentum is very, very difficult. That's something that we're wrestling with at MAP Charity. Not that I'm trying to retire but without younger people coming through and working on the events team, on the education team etc, you've not really got hope that you can carry on doing stuff. So it is inspiring to know that people who've benefited from what you're doing creatively or in education come back and help you deliver more for other people.
As for other challenges that are more within a lifetime or within a generation. The rent's too high or we're getting pushed out by development or the funding's been cut off, why is the onus always on the arts organisations? That's a much more immediate problem, but it's a much bigger problem in terms of what society places value on, really, isn't it? And I feel like we're going backwards in that sense. I feel like we're heading back towards a Victorian form of philanthropy from rich people.
When we set up MAP Charity, we always wanted it to be quite self-sustaining. There's a bunch of charity work, third sector work, creative work or work with young people that are having difficulty or at the fringes of society. It's always a bit optional, isn't it? People think if we can afford it, it would be brilliant to do that. So if say a company's done really well, if they’ve made massive profits, they only think then that they’ll donate. If there's money left after this, that and the other, we'll do it. After everything else has been done.
I don't think that's the same in every society. I think in British society there's definitely a priority system and it's probably not the most sensible. In terms of creative industries, they actually do earn a lot of money. Creative studies help bind society together.
But those questions on why is the onus always on organisations like ours to work so hard? It's because, structurally they're not supported in the right way. Although, there are funders out there who do support stuff. But, on that front, within my time doing this, the competition for such funds has become much more intense by a factor of multiples.
It's not 20% harder. It's two times harder, three times harder, five times harder in terms of the number of people applying for each available piece of funding. But you know, when we started MAP Charity, we wanted to be a not-for-profit business, and by that, self-sustaining. Up until our building was at risk of getting redeveloped, which was in 2016, from 2007-2016, we didn't apply for any funding. We did a decade of earning money and keeping the organisation going on that basis.
And I think that's important to have organisations that have a core principle of being self-sustaining. And that is a challenge. You have to allow these things to take place as well, you have to allow organisations to stay. By that I mean if we're a music organisation, you have to let us do music for the public. And if you say “it's too loud, turn it down”, then we probably can't self-sustain ourselves.
But I think that element of self-sustainability in creative and charitable organisations is really important to give them a robustness. Then we're not at the mercy of essentially the business community saying, “we've done really well at business this year. Let's donate some money to charity”.
When I did the youth work side of things when I was 20 / 21 years old and I got offered a job after doing the internet radio stuff, I was really aware of how the agenda changed of what we were doing with the young people, but it was based on the funding which we'd applied for, or my employers had applied for. For instance, “this is a project to do with health and living and sustainability. This is a project to do with knife crime”. So one year you're talking about one thing, the next year you're talking about another thing and the agenda can be changed quite a lot. It's good to have your principles that you can stick to because you're not reliant too much on outside funding. That's what I'm very keen for this charity to have and this site that we're in to have, is the ability to generate the money to sustain itself.
You touched on it before, but Hope Foundry now contains a lot of studios which external creatives rent from you. Has that become a key part of how you fund MAP?
That is correct, yeah. We were we were lucky enough to buy the building in 2019. We got some of the last of the EU money to refurbish the top two floors of the building and that's half of it really, 10,000 square feet of space. Through renting those spaces at affordable prices we get to help cover the rent in conjunction with running events in the public space on the ground floor.
We were really fortunate to be able to get that funding to do this and be able to buy the building. We had some amazing people come and act as social investors and lend us money for five years and then we could sort out another borrowing agreement after that. And we were very lucky to get the support of the local authority to access this funding as well.
And there was a huge crowdfunding as well, wasn't there?
That's right, yeah, a massive amount of public support. I feel very grateful that so many people say how important MAP has been to them over the years. It's hard to believe when you're at the centre of it or you're just working every day.
But it is really nice to hear every now and again someone say that, and you're like, wow, I can't even quite believe how important it is. It's hard to appreciate how significant that is to people, to see something like this functioning in society. It does actually give people hope. It does give people a lot of belief that things can be done differently.
In terms of the nightlife scene in the UK there's been a definite decline in club spaces, with a lot of clubs around the country closing. What kind of advice would you give to someone that was hoping to get into starting their own independent night?
It seems to me that some of the places that feel right to me and have flourished have their roots in a wider community other than just people coming to see artists perform. By that I mean, yes, people might come to see an artist perform in that space, but they might go to some sort of event during the day there, or they might go and meet up with people during the day there. It has a life outside of the 10pm till 4 am cycle and that feels really important now. This slightly more diverse use and being part of a reality that's not just quote-unquote nightlife. That would be probably the main practical advice.
Who are the under-the-radar heroes of Slop? Because I know you’ve got Will and Al onboard.
Yeah, people like Will and Al. I mean, when I talk about the next generation coming through and inspiring me as a founder, that's the kind of example that I'm talking about. And it gives you strength to carry on doing stuff but also helps to give more of what you're doing to the public. To support more people. I definitely feel like there’s been a massive boost of energy on the Cosmic Slop side of things. But you know, it's been a huge team effort throughout the years.
Would you say much has changed with Cosmic Slop over the past 16 years? Because Cosmic Slop is a party rooted in its residents. Obviously, you have big name artists that come and play, but it tends to be unannounced. There’s that core set of people just going because there's a community there that they see at the Slop parties or it's a friendly atmosphere and they're not necessarily bothered about a name. They know that the music's going to be good.
That's it. You know, they trust you. And that's another really useful bit of advice I'd give to people, I don't think you can do this by buying in the names. People have got to trust what you're doing. But I remember distinctly setting up Slop. Years pass, people move away. The next generation of younger people come in and people are coming back and going, “oh, it's all changed, hasn't it? The clouds are totally different. It's not the same, is it?” And then another couple of years later, people say it again.
And I'll be honest with you, I'm enjoying Cosmic Slop more than ever. I think artistically, it's better than ever. What it's doing and what it represents to people is better than ever. Sonically, it's better than ever. It didn't always feel that way. But I think now it's had that much injection of fresh energy. I guess it feels like it's changing every two years, it keeps changing and then you realise it's changed so much, but really nothing's changed. And then you know it really is the same. It reminds me of a saying, I think it's some sort of French saying, but it's basically like the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Even though lots of little things have changed, through little cycles, even after all these changes, it's essentially still the same thing. And I think that really feels relevant. The sense of community that we've got is greater than ever. I feel like accessibility for different people is better than ever. I feel like we've got a lot of love behind it, more than ever. That's a real privilege to be involved in something like that, because you know it's not just you. It's not the first group of people who ran events and helped run the space or played records. It's stands for something and people can pour their hearts into it.
It's a real privilege to be involved in something like that. To have it mean more to people now than it did then. I think a lot of things are probably never as good as they were back in the day. But this feels like it is. I guess you're always going to say that, aren't you? I’m sure Oasis are doing shows saying, “yeah our music's better than ever”. And for me, I genuinely feel like allowing space for the contribution of other people and younger people to input, that's the thing that makes it relevant still, after all this time.
One of those things about fresh ideas, fresh energy, next generation stuff is setting up Cosmic Slop Records. Moving equipment that I've had for a long time at home into a place where it can be used by lots of different people. Bringing lots of creative energy and feeding that back onto the dancefloor at Slop. Things like that are really important and I think amazing things will happen over the next few years on that front. Obviously building the Sunflower Sound System for Sam (Floating Points) and getting a sort of little brother to Cosmic Slop that's actually taller than the big brother. We're lucky to have that opportunity for myself, for Slop, for MAP Charity, because it gives us a way to communicate with the world, on a global scale rather than a sort of national scale.
And I think that's really important for charities and organisations that are doing stuff to help people. They've got to have support from people who can afford it, because they've got financial power or they can afford to help with their cultural power and spread the message.
That's something that's made MAP Charity unique across its lifespan, the fact that we get supported by big artists. Because these big artists relate to us artistically, they can see that we've got a great sound system, that we love sound and we've got a studio, they're inspired creatively by what we're doing.
But they're also inspired by the meaning of what it is, the fact that it's providing money for us to fund the school and its opportunities for young people that might not have the privileges that we've had as artists in our development.
And making it easy for people, these big artists, to have a tangible mechanism, a meaningful mechanism to support and to change the society that they're in. I think if we can get together and harness that power, it'll be a real force for change.
I think a lot of people aren’t confident in saying, “I'm trying to help, I'm trying to make a change, I'm trying to do something”, because nowadays, maybe more so than ever, people get cut down for not trying hard enough or saying the wrong thing or what have you. So if you can have a mechanism for all of that, for the interchange and for that support to take place, I feel like that's something quite powerful. And I do think as MAP charity, we wouldn't be in this position now if we hadn't provided a mechanism for that to take place.
If every artist out there that we loved and admired had the confidence to assert themselves, and I think there's a lot of frustrated artists, if we could support them to use their artistic power to help the community they’re from or that they live in, that would be really good.
Huge thank you to Tom for taking the time out to speak to us for this feature, be sure to follow Cosmic Slops journey and get yourself down to one of their events to witness the brilliance of their party and soundsystem in person. You can dive deeper into the work of MAP Charity here too.