Charlie Caper, world renowned magician and busker, sees street performers as modern day hunter-gatherers, living in lands of plenty until conditions change (weather) or food sources (income) are depleted, then moving on with their nomadic life. Because the average city is not designed for street performers, part of a busker’s life is to adapt and survive in each new destination.

I’ve been wondering what it would take to make a busker stop, to think they’d found the perfect pitch. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has set up a busking scheme to encourage young new talent into the London subways.

People like Eric Clapton who went on to have careers of intergalactic cultural importance began here, so we want to encourage that talent,” said the London mayor.

But he’s ignored all other types of performance, focused only on the young, and has limited it to the underground, leaving much of London a no-go for the nomadic busker.

I am not Boris Johnson, but as mayor of my imaginary town, I have decided to create a busking utopia. It will be called Butopia. The streets will be clean, but not obsessively so [Lessons Learned (LL) No. 1, Singapore: shooting crows from trees is going too far]. The public spaces will be open and free. The artistic culture will be exciting and experimental [LL No. 2, Rome: The Dancer, the Clown, and the Bird].

My Butopia Manifesto

1. Toilets: I am aware that there are always cafes, and buskers will be encouraged to establish friendly working relationships with local businesses [LL No. 3, Athens: Detroit Jimmy and the Frozen Yoghurt shop], but Butopia will provide free public toilets. They will be mosaic tiled with polished copper fittings and marble sinks [LL No. 4, Copenhagen: Strøget Street, five star toilets for your peeing pleasure]. Butopia’s toilets will also have private rooms for costume changes, with wet wipes and face mirrors.

2. Space: Butopia will have a wide pedestrian street, solid stone so the unicycles and tap dancers don’t have to worry about cobbles [LL No. 5, Rome: Ann Amendolagine was the cobble-stone tap dancing queen, but she still worried about her ankles]. The street will be wide enough for a circle show audience of two hundred people with blocking the shop fronts, long enough to accommodate lots of acts, and have efficient drainage for quick drying pitches. There will be arches along the side of the street, between the shops, to shelter from the rain and sun, or for quiet musicians to gain natural acoustics [LL No. 6, Subways: the natural amplifiers].
Note: research and examples taken from: Las Ramblas, Barcelona. Istiklal Street, Istanbul. Arbat Street, Moscow. Strøget Street, Copenhagen. Royal Mile, Edinburgh.

3. Money: the currency will be the Butopian Dollar (B$). The B$ will include large denomination coins [LL No. 7, Scandinavia: people are happier to throw a twenty Danish Kroner coin into a hat than a twenty Sweedish Kroner note, even though the Danish Kroner is worth more]. The main street will have machines that will count coins and exchange them for notes. The machines will take a one percent commission; this money will be used to promote street performers with websites and posters and public announcements. At each pitch there will be a card swipe terminal for cashless donations.

4. Tourism: Butopia will be sunny, but not too-

Oh sod it! What’s the point?

If I create Butopia then everyone will flock there, for a short time it will be a thriving, beautiful, artistic place, but sooner or later it will all go wrong [LL No. 7, The Matrix: Agent Smith commenting on the original Matrix, “It was an actual utopia; however, as humans subconsciously experience misery and suffering as an inherent part of life, they rejected it as being too perfect, and as a result, it was a monumental failure”].

Some irresponsible thoughtless busker will block the street and a police car will be delayed on its way to an emergency [LL No. 8, St. James Street, London]. Or two buskers will fight over a pitch and JimBob will get stabbed in the neck with a pen [LL No. 9, Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco]. Or some arrogant musician will turn up with window-shattering amps and blow the street out, just because they’ve heard that Mayor Chris of Butopia is a busker-friendly chap and they’ll take advantage.

I’ll have to introduce a permit system so I can monitor the buskers and avoid disreputable types. The coin-machine commission will have to go up ten percent to cover administration costs. With the permit system I’ll be accused of being some sort of fascist controlling good for nothing. I’ll have to get Busker-police to enforce the new rules, and then Busker-judges to judge the rule breakers, and Busker-prisons to punish them.

It’ll be all, “You said this was a utopia!” and, “What about our cultural freedom?” And, “Mayor Smith is a Public Space hater.”

I’ll fight back and say,

Listen up busker types, so you’re bringing art to the people, that’s great, but no one’s forcing you to play on the street! You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth, play the game, and quit your whingeing.”

But that’ll only placate them for so long. I’ll end up having to string bad buskers from lampposts all along Butopia Street, to send a clear message to the people that I wont take any crap in my utopia, and avoid some sort of blood thirsty coup. But at this stage it wont really feel like a utopia anymore.

CASE STUDY

Seoul: elements of a busking utopia?

When the Percussion Brothers told us that they had been paid to be street performers in Seoul, we thought we had found a true busking utopia. Seoul Arts Council administers the scheme and agreed to an interview (but not on camera).

Street Performers are invited to a thirty-minute audition for a chance to play at a number of designated locations along the Cheonggyecheon River. The performers have to submit a schedule of when they will turn up and perform. The artists are evaluated on a points system that takes into account skills, audience appreciation, and commitment to their schedule.

The remuneration is not a wage or a per-hour payment, but is intended to cover expenses and support the artists. The performers cannot accept public money – definitely no hat, and not even a suggestion of tipping is allowed. However the Seoul Arts Council does have a locked tipping box that they control and they told us the money goes back to the artists.

Another big draw back in terms of utopias is that the scheme is only open to Koreans, so travelling buskers will have to try their luck on the streets of Hongdae, where drunken locals and tourists will stop to watch a show, but may not catch on to the tipping part of the performance. None of the street performers we met in Seoul were full time buskers, suggesting it’s not the utopia it has the potential to be.

[LL No. 11, Butopia: it’s probably just an alien masked sci-fi dream].

Chris