GLARCIVERSARY

ten years of greater lanarkshire auricular research council

GLARC SYMPOSIUM 2026: Where next for DIY music infrastructure?


GLARC is a small DIY cassette label based in Glasgow that has been releasing music since 2016. To celebrate the label’s 10th anniversary GLARC are launching a new website - developed with ada fuge aka netgf aka bitrot – that will host the GLARC back catalogue as a free to access distributed / torrented archive. This is part of a growing network of DIY music initiatives aiming to step away from corporate platforms, and reimagine the internet in a way that connects with some of its original utopian premises: free or cheaply accessible content & tools, anti-censorship, celebrating free expression & creativity, decentralised, collaborative, using simple code that is geared towards easy replication and skill sharing (along with low server use), fun to use. Simultaneously, musicians, artists and event organisers continue to wrestle with how to practice and share a 'DIY' ethos, in a context where entrepreneurialism and grift dominate, pay is shit, and crises proliferate.

This afternoon symposium - organised in collaboration with Dr Henry Ivry and the Infrastructure Humanities Group at the University of Glasgow – invites short papers, films, performances and readings responding to the topic of DIY digital infrastructure for music and art:

  • What does it mean to rethink infrastructure as local, non-scalable experiments in creativity?
  • How do DIY infrastructures reimagine, reproduce, or challenge existing creative ecosystems?
  • What are the possibilities and challenges of building a DIY music infrastructure today?
  • How are DIY, non-profit, and grassroots music and/or arts scenes already operating outside of platform and corporate infrastructures and logics?
  • Why has the utopian promise of both the early internet and DIY politics been so easy to co-opt and undermine?
  • How do we build and/or envisage alternative futures that resist extraction?


    • The event will be held at ARC, University of Glasgow, 1-4pm on Thursday 26th March 2026. Lunch and refreshments provided.


    Please send short 200-word proposals for interventions lasting between 10 and 15-minutes. This event will be a blend of academic and non-academic speakers and will include a variety of presentation medium and media. All formats are welcomed and encouraged!

    Send proposals to glarcglarcglarcglarc@gmail.com by Feb 6th, and get in touch with any questions too.