When talking about their biggest successes since leaving university, she talked about launching their business: ‘This was created through a module when we both did our degree, BA Contemporary and Popular Music’. She mentioned one lecturer, Jale Nolan, lecturer in Music Enterprise, module which inspired the creation of MARISAM.
It's a massive success and amazing achievement for us to go from university with this business idea already and then to have actually pursued that outside once graduating
After talking about how their business was built, she mentioned the creative scene in the North-East: ‘It's definitely been tricky, especially as young females. I think right off the bat, we didn't get taken seriously, especially with some of our event concepts’.
She mentioned that if the events were unfamiliar to the venue owners, they would usually turn them down: ‘We're also trying to make sure we create really inclusive spaces within our events, both with our musicians, but also with our audience members as well’.
MARISAM wants to bring a focus to music-driven events, bringing innovation to ‘shake things up in the North-East’: ‘Because it’s such a small creative scene, you often get a lot of the same names. It's really important to try and pick out those people who are maybe slipping under the radar a bit’.
One of their more recent projects is Late ‘n’ Live, a musical pub quiz that mixes live music and pub quizzes to make an innovative mix: ‘Every round is a music round. We have genre-based rounds, missing lyrics, connections… literally anything you can think of’.
The band hosts the whole night and they perform every question, up to a minute of it, so it just gets the audience singing along
Apart from hosting pub quizzes, one of their most famous events in Late ‘n’ Live: Karaoke, where the audience just go up to the band and they get the opportunity to sing alongside the band, making it really interactive with the people attending: ‘Really, you can just get up on stage and sing with the band, choose whatever song you want. They've got a huge repertoire’.
Recently, they’ve also launched ‘Platform 22’, a local live music showcase where they give musicians based in the North-East the spotlight. Maria described it as a ‘battle of the bands, but in a nicer setting’.
When talking about how these events would help with the growth of the creative scene in the North-East, she mentioned that sometimes she thinks that ‘certain venues like to stick within a certain niche just because that's what they're used to, but we've kind of gone in and taken this new concept and it's worked really well, and they've it's brought a whole new clientele to their venue.’
One of their biggest features as a business is that they try and collaborate with students as much as possible to give them a rough idea of the music industry: ‘It's really important to target that student demographic just because they are the future. They are the ones coming into these jobs, and we want to make sure that they have the opportunity to integrate themselves in the industry’.
It's really important to tap into that (student) demographic
She was keen to talk about her change of perspective from being a student to a business owner, and she mentioned that one of the biggest lessons she’s learnt was to stay in touch with all the aspects of university, such as the Career Services: ‘We went through the start-up grant that the Career Services offered a few years ago. We managed to get 2000 pounds of funding to kick start our business. So, if we didn't have those contacts whilst we're at university and after, we wouldn't be where we are today’.
After making their debut in the creative scene in the North-East, what’s their next step to innovate the music culture with their visionary projects?