Punch Records is UK's premier Music & Arts development agency - It produces concerts, festivals, tours and innovative educational & outreach programmes for young people

History

Punch Records was founded in the Perry Barr

Perry Barr

Perry Barr is an inner-city area in north Birmingham, England. It is also a council constituency, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the smaller Perry Barr ward and the wards of Handsworth Wood, Lozells and East Handsworth, and Oscott, which elect three councillors to...

 area of Birmingham in 1997 by Ammo Talwar. The shop began as a black music record store, and also a place where underground DJs

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

 from the West Midlands

West Midlands (county)

The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a 2009 estimated population of 2,638,700. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The...

 could demonstrate their mixing

Turntablism

Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer.The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...

 and rapping

Rapping

Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...

 abilities.

Workshops for children were later added as part of punchs outreach programme that were used by local schools. From this, Birmingham City Council

Birmingham City Council

The Birmingham City Council is the body responsible for the governance of the City of Birmingham in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974. It is the most populated local authority in the United Kingdom with, following a reorganisation of boundaries in June 2004, 120 Birmingham...

 became involved and have since used Punch for various events including a roadshow

Roadshow theatrical release

A roadshow theatrical release was a term in the American motion picture industry for a practice in which a film opened in a limited number of theaters in large cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, and San Francisco for a specific period of time before the...

 in Centenary Square

Centenary Square

Centenary Square is a public square on Broad Street in central Birmingham, England, named in 1989 in celebration of the centenary of Birmingham achieving city status in 1889....

 during Birmingham's European Capital of Culture 2008

European Capital of Culture

The European Capital of Culture is a city designated by theEuropean Union for a period of one calendar year during which it organises a series of cultural events with a strong European dimension....

 bid.

In 2002, the success of the record shop has led owner, Ammo, to relocate to the Custard Factory

Custard Factory

The Custard Factory is an arts and media production centre in Birmingham, England .Located on the redeveloped site of the Bird's Custard factory in the industrial district of Digbeth, it is home to a community of businesses, primarily with an artistic and media slant, but also including...

 complex in Digbeth

Digbeth

Digbeth is an area of Birmingham, England. Following the destruction of the Inner Ring Road, Digbeth is now considered a district within Birmingham City Centre. As part of the Big City Plan, Digbeth is undergoing a large redevelopment scheme that will regenerate the old industrial buildings into...

 where the company now runs rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

, song writing

Songwriter

A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

, music production, poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, lyrics

Lyrics

Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...

, dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

, street art

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

, photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

 and percussion

Percussion instrument

A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

 lessons for the local community, schools and youth centres.

In 2003, Punch produced a film called Preskool, highlighting and promoting Birmingham's black music scene

Punch now collaborate with companies such as Artfest, the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, BMG

BMG

Bertelsmann Music Group, , was a division of Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Japan's Sony Corporation of America on October 1, 2008. It was established in 1987 to combine the music label activities of Bertelsmann...

, OOM Gallery, Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

, Urban Music Seminar and Warners

Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...

.

Ammo Talwar was awarded an MBE

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 in the Queen's Honours list 2008 for his contribution to music and young people in the West Midlands.