Naomi Belshaw joins WildKat PR to launch new composer services

Creative agency for culture and music WildKat PR, which now has offices in London, Berlin and New York, has announced a new appointment to its management team. Naomi Belshaw joins director of London and New Offices Olivia Brown and founder Kathleen Alder in the capacity of composer relations and PR executive in the UK office, with Carolin Denz director Berlin Office and Central Europe based in Germany. The agency’s services include PR, marketing, branding, social media and event management for cultural institutions and artists.

Kathleen Alder, founder of WildKat, said: “I am really thrilled to have Naomi join our team in London. She brings with her a wealth of experience and embodies the WildKat ethos through and through: a love for music and furthering careers in this sector. WildKat has always been the leader in innovating and adapting to challenging times in this sector and I feel particularly the new sort of musician or ensemble need a much more wholesome approach with many elements, such as publishing, thread into their requirements. We are excited to offer such comprehensive advice and services.”

Belshaw spent 10 years at PRS for Music, MCPS and PRS Foundation, where she worked in the fields of copyright, music royalties, funding and publishing. She will provide hourly-billed consultancy for composers and small-scale organisations by equipping them with a tailored handbook for composers “on all things to kick-start your career and music royalty administration”, and funding advice on topics such as how to use creative approaches to capture funding and how and where to apply.

Said Belshaw: “I am really excited about the prospect of giving tailored advice to early career composers. The landscape of the music industry has changed enormously in the last decade and now a composer needs to think differently about publishing, commissioning and much, much more. For example, the number of young composers being taken on by classical publishers today totals less than one per year. As the classical composer “giants” of the 19th and 20th centuries go out of copyright, publishers are having to change their models to survive; taking on composers who cross genre boundaries, write for TV, film and games or only on a work by work basis. Suffice it to say, from publishing to recording to promotion, the modern composer has to be much more agile and savvy in the 21st century.”

In her new role, Belshaw will relaunch WildKat’s free-to-access 15-minute quick-fire consultancy series #OpenSessions. Tailored to suit artists and musicians, labels, management, designers and creatives, upcoming sittings are Funding 101, #Royalties – How to get paid for writing music, Grand Rights – What is that? and Publishing for Dummies.

Launched in 2008, clients at WildKat include Music for Youth, Spitalfields Music and Radio France, Psappha, and London Bel Canto Festival.

wildkatpr.com