The roots of this vibrant music culture can be traced back to 1999, when the Rame Conservation Trust hosted a ‘Festival of Fun(d)’ throughout the summer to help finance its newly reinvigorated Maker Camp. It held Maker Jazz Festival, Eclipse Day and Maker Fayre.

Following this, Maker Sunshine Festival was set up in 2001 by Pete and Linda Dunstone to draw people of all ages to Maker Camp and host live music, theatre, comedy, cabaret and similar events. Their collaborative ethos prioritised the involvement of local people in running the festival infrastructure, providing food stalls, activities for children and performing on the various stages. Dave Summers and Plymouth Musicians Cooperative booked musicians, and the Maker Green Team implemented a recycling and minimum waste approach. The festival ran successfully for many years and helped foster the reputation of Maker as a site for music. The last festival took place in 2013 – it then evolved into Maker Sessions which became very popular weekend music events.

Alongside this Maker Music and Arts (MMA) was set up and ran the very popular Energy Room and Random Arms venue. The venue hosted jam nights, gigs, pantomime and a range of artistic events.

In the early 2000s Cornwall Youth Music Action Zone funded the MMA youth music project, run by Pete Dunstone and Will Rogers. Many of the young people who attended these sessions became successful musicians, sound engineers and events managers, and it created an important space for young people:

Maker’s always been an important part of my life growing up - when we were younger down in Kingsands and Cawsands there wasn’t much going on. The youth club was a real lifeline and then Maker really developed so we were up here doing things like the music workshops to pottery, woodland walks. It really opened up a whole array of things (Harry).

Maker has been an integral part of my life and of all the people that I have grown up with, as well as being the music centre of my life, and without the nurturing environment it provides I would never have become involved in music as part of a group. It is the most important place in my life. 

The first time I picked up the guitar was at music club here. Some of the best friendships I have made are up here and are still going strong today, it’s exciting and it gives you focus, and pride to be with the same people, year in and year out. I come back here after four or five years and it’s the same friends, having the same good time.  Musically I just couldn’t begin to describe how much it has impacted on life for me. My first playing with other human beings would have happened here, first gig I played, first gig I’d ever seen (Phoenix).

Maker will always have a huge part in our existence as a band, let alone in helping us with our careers. Yes, it’s very special (Haunt the Woods).

The Energy Room provided a stage, audience and opportunity for those involved in the youth work sessions to hone their craft, alongside attracting musicians with impressive regional, and at times national, reputations. In one of our interviews, Land of the Giants members Tom Ogilvie and Ted Baker pointed out that having a stage to perform on as young musicians was very important in helping to build confidence as performing musicians.

Maker Music and Arts provided a much-needed social space for people of all ages on the Peninsula, for whom the logistics and costs of travelling to Plymouth for gigs can be prohibitive. It’s reputation for hosting outstanding music drew people from afar, and nurtured a sense of identity and belonging for those who felt at home at Maker:

I think I speak for a lot of people in that it’s a massive part of my life and our lives and the community around here and friendship. A lot of people, when they think about Maker memories, they think about Maker Festival and excitement and things that went on around that, but also as a massive lifeline … for youth in the community starting from music clubs. And then even now it’s a massive part of our social life. Everyone who used to come to those music clubs has stayed in the area because of what Maker’s become and always come back to the area because of it (Jenny).

I think something that really stands out for me especially when I moved down here was the support that it generates. So you can come here and if you’re gigging people will come round and really, really support you and rally behind you and that gives you such a sense of belonging it’s unique – really, really unique (Sally).

I work as a composer and a conductor. To get away from noise and people to be able to write music - this is the perfect place. It’s absolutely beautiful, definitely, like the Rame Peninsula is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been and to be able to be up here in solitude and work it’s like literally the best thing for creativity. You can shut yourself away and then, if you want to go for a walk, it is just staggering around here. 

So this building [the Barrack Block] and the surrounding buildings the Venue, Energy Rooms, and the Random Arms have just become a place where we are definitely always amongst friends and more often then not they become collaborators, and it’s become like just a cool place for us to be and to be creative (Simon). 

One of the nicest things about playing at Maker is the audience, the sense of community that has built up …. As a band we travel across the whole country and when we come back to Maker it feels like a proper homecoming, people really supporting us. It’s an inspiring place (Land of the Giants).

One of the most striking themes that emerged from the Maker Memories interviews was a strong sense of belonging and identity that the music and arts culture had for the young adults at Maker. We had observed a strong attachment to the place from the older people that we interviewed, some of whom travelled an impressive distance to tell us their stories of being at Maker Camp from the 1930s onwards. When we interviewed young people we found a similar strong sense of attachment to Maker:

It’s like a place of belonging and safety and the Random Arms where we’re sitting in now - the amount of memories we’ve all got from growing up here and it is where we come to meet up, it’s where we come if we need to chat about anything, if we want support from anybody, if we’ve got any ideas, if people have been away for a long time and come back to the villages, this is the epicentre of where all that connectivity happens. I strongly believe I would have left the village years ago, and I really feel that might be the same for a lot of people around here, so it’s so important to keep the community alive bringing those villages together and different ages together (Jenny).

So, Maker to me is about artistic freedom, it’s about community, and it’s about sharing, it’s about not taking. This place is special because the people who are involved with this place are all local people and they’re not trying to make loads of money, they are not trying to elevate themselves above anybody else, it’s just a place where we come and offer some alternative from what goes on outside really, which is more of a cut-throat world. This is one of those gems where everyone comes to and feels something special here. It’s hard to really pinpoint what that is. (Jack).

Following the closure of the Random Arms and Energy Rooms in 2018 a group of young adults who spent their formative years at Maker were determined to keep the vibrancy of Maker’s creative culture alive. Since then, Josh Elleschild, Tom Ogilvie, Dom Moore, Andy and Amanda Knights have worked hard to develop Patchwork Studios and the Garrison Gallery as creative ventures in the heart of the Barrack Block.

Contemporary images © Dom Moore. All other images courtesy Maker Memories, with thanks to all those that have contributed their personal collections.