azy Gramophone was established in 2003 by Philip Levine and Daniel Chidgey with the aim of helping young, independent, up-and-coming artists, writers and musicians to gain exposure and showcase their work.
www.lazygramophone.com, designed by Ben Chidgey, was the initial platform from which the artists could display their various works of art, music, poetry, illustration and photography.
In 2006 Lazy Gramophone Press was established and published Adam Green's debut novel, 'Satsuma Sun-mover' on May 1st. It has since been long listed for The Dylan Thomas Prize which is £60,000 prize designed not only to richly reward the best young writer in the world but also to serve as a focus for and incentive to all young writers throughout the English-speaking world.
Since then we have published Sam Rawling's poetry collection 'Circle Time' and his zombie romance 'Echoes of Dawn', as well as a series of handmade illustrated poetry booklets featuring collaborations between Lazy Gramophone artists and writers. Guy J Jackson's spoken word albums and Simon Gibson's music albums also became available for sale via the website.
Since 2007 there have been regular live 'Lazy Gramophone Presents' events at The Macbeth, The Miller and The Luminaire (all central London) as well as a number of small day-long festivals info. These events include music, spoken word, theatre, art displays, fashion shows and comedy. Throughout all these activities, we are constantly dedicated to supporting and developing artists and groups from the UK and London.
We instigated a charity event in aid of Cancer Research UK with links to the Hackney 'Write to Ignite' festival in September 2007 for a whole night of spoken word with the finest poetry acts in London. In the near future we aim to put on an even bigger event for the charity C.A.L.M.
A newly developed website will be launched by September 2008 courtesy of feedMyPixel.com, with the aim of becoming one of the prominent creative platforms in the UK, enabling our artists to consistently update and showcase their most current work.
Since the beginning of 2008 we have been coordinating and collaborating with artists in the curation of The Macbeth Gallery, that displays both up-and-coming and more established artists' work on a two-week rotation.
Recently, we have been fortunate enough to gain support from The Hospital Club, with three of our artists' works being exhibited and available for sale at the club. The artists featured are Tom Harris, Garry Milne and Dan Prescott, whose piece 'Quentin Armstrong' will be featured on the front cover of the latest member's magazine.