ABSTRACT
Newcastle communities regularly advertised full programmes for their concerts in local newspapers. These programmes form a data set for an analysis, following an approach advocated for by William Weber in 2008, which is a close reading of surviving concert programmes across a time period. Through close readings, the approach is to look for emerging themes and traits, which in turn convey insights into the communities that produced them. Furthermore, the enquiry is also focussed on the purpose of advertising local events in such detail further afield. Did the local concert committees hope that an audience would travel from other townships to their amateur benefit concerts or was something else driving the concert promotion? Following these lines of enquiry, informed also by the purposes of the concerts, the participants and audience and the colonial context, an argument is made about the communities’ principles – inclusion, fairness and cooperation – that contribute to a democratic society.
