Tone Garden Case Study

Tonegarden was established in 2012, Julian Vaughan along fellow directors Graham

Scott and Raymond Kwiecinski had identified that there was an absence of music

studio facilities on the south side of Edinburgh city centre, where there was a big

demand due to the large student population and many of Edinburgh’s live music

venues nearby.

This part of Edinburgh is made up of largely affluent residential neighbourhoods,

music studios tend to operative out of industrial units, where it is easier to develop

spaces and manage noise away from residential properties, The major difficulty with

establishing a music studio in the area was the shortage of suitable and affordable

premises.

Tonegarden found it’s first home in the Grange at Mentone Gardens, the premises

was a small, terraced unit large enough to accommodate 2 rooms which could be

used for rehearsal with 1 of the rooms doubling up as the live room for recording. We

negotiated a 3 year lease with the landlord and set to work developing the unit by

building internal rooms, sound proofing and applying sound treatments within the

rooms to make a good acoustic environment for playing at volume, also to ensure we

didn’t cause a noise issue for residential neighbours nearby.

Having been open for 2 months we received a letter from the City of Edinburgh

Council stating that the landlord, had submitted a planning application to develop our

unit into residential accommodation, the letter was intended for the residential

neighbours and by mistake it had been mailed to us, the tenants. What followed was

a difficult period where the landlord sought to ‘dirty’ tactics in an effort to evict us and

avoid paying us any compensation for cutting our 3 year lease short, Luckly Julian

managed to intercept an email addressed to CEC sent by the landlords agent

complaining about the music studio operation, we were then able to use this as

evidence of unfair practice and negotiate a cash sum to move on. At this time

Graham and Raymond decided to leave Tonegarden to focus on other things.

We had been supported through this episode by then councillor Jim Orr who, by

lucky coincidence new some people in management at the newly established

Summerhall, Jim thought there might be a chance of moving Tonegarden there and

arranged a meeting with myself and Marcus Pickering. We identified some spaces

which would be suitable to develop into music studio space, work commenced took

6-10 weeks to complete.

Summerhall turned out to be the best possible location for Tonegarden, which was

very lucky because there was/is zero alternative, Summerhall has grown to be a

world renowned centre for the arts in the heart of Edinburgh’s south side community,

along with it’s own gallery space and venue’s, pub and a multitude of resident

businesses which form it’s own creative community. There have been many

advantages for Tonegarden being located within and being involved with

Summerhall.

Tonegarden has always sought to create opportunities and support the local music

community, at Summerhall we have been able to do this by sponsoring The

Meadows Festival, providing free equipment for the Main stage and Youth music

stage, we also have close links to Totally Sound youth music charity, Julian is a

board member of charity who managed to negotiate space for the project with the

Edinburgh Fringe Society once the South Bridge Resource Centre renovations have

been completed. Tonegarden currently provides music facilities to Canongait Youth

Creative Hub while SBRC is not in use. We have also supported local schools and

colleges by providing work experience placements to young people studying or

wishing to pursue a career in music.

Julian Vaughan Managing Director who, along with a lifelong involvement in music,

also has a background in social care, previously working as a youth worker and

mental health professional amongst other roles, the importance of playing music with

regard to wellbeing cannot be underestimated. If we sacrifice the arts for the sake of

commercial gain we risk losing societies capacity for higher functioning and we will

all be increasing impoverished.