SOUNDS OF OUR TOWN

In 2016, Lauren (Istvandity), Sarah and Jez started work on a project that sought to bring their shared interests in popular music heritage practices together with the aligned research interests of Catherine Strong and Simone Driessen. They approached this collaboration through the lens of 'third place'. Ray Oldenburg coined the concept of 'third places' to capture informal gathering places where people can meet up and hang out. He argued that third places serve important social functions, providing temporary relief from the predictable routines, roles and responsibilities that characterise home (first places) and work (second places). Third places are said to constitute their own social worlds, characterised by diverse, shifting groups of people, playful interactions and relaxed positive atmospheres that support individual well-being. Oldenburg's examples of third places included everything from Parisian sidewalk cafes and Japanese teahouses, to local bars, barbershops and main streets.

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Noting that cultural heritage and its related places, practices and relationships had received limited attention in the third places scholarship, the team set out to explore how a range of popular music heritage activities constitute or resemble third places. Our work considered physical and virtual community-run popular music archives and museums as third places. We also looked at how music heritage walking tours can function as third places. Finally, we extended the concept to the reunion tours of 'heritage' music acts, thinking about how these tours act as temporary sites where third place is enacted. Through these different examples, our research revealed a continuum of tangible and intangible representations of third place as it relates to popular music heritage.

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Zel and Sarah then did a deeper dive into how Oldenburg's characteristics of third place can be observed in community-based, do-it-yourself archives and museums. Using the Australian Jazz Museum (AJM) as an example – the AJM being a popular music heritage institution run exclusively by volunteers, most of whom are older adults and retirees – we examined how the AJM creates a sense of community and promotes well-being for volunteers. Observations at the AJM and interviews with its volunteers revealed the institution's sociality and affective atmosphere, and the important role of the AJM in the lives of volunteers. As a third place, the AJM is much more than its preservation function – it promotes sociality, nurtures friendships, creates environments for caring and living, and enables productive retirement.

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