(SHREWSBURY) What started as a tribute to busker Ben Bebbington by his family and friends has swelled to event with over 40 musical acts. Ben was tragically killed in a senseless murder by two teenagers in September of 2012.Made up of over 200 people who filled the town with a carnival atmosphere, Happy Days in Shrewsbury took place in the town’s beautiful medieval centre. Raising over £10,000, it was a celebration of community, music and talent all in glorious sunshine. It also raised awareness and funds for The Shrewsbury Ark - a charity that had supported Ben in recent years and meant a huge amount to him.

A known busker within the town, Ben was an excellent musician and would often play his guitar in some late great impromptu jams. Other muses would join him after-hours and perform standards and original so...

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Hard-working busker Derek Allan is about to embark on his toughest gig yet - playing 10 sets of 10 hours in 10 different venues.The singer-songwriter’s fundraising efforts will see him play for 10 consecutive nights as he pulls out all the stops to help Grace House Hospice Appeal to reach its latest target.

And not content with that, he is issuing a universal offer of help to any small charities or individuals who need a helping hand getting together the money they need.

Derek, 34, from Red Row in Northumberland, first came to the attention of Journal readers when he performed seven consecutive 12-hour gigs in seven different Northumberland pubs, with no backing group.

The exertion left Derek, who suffers from epilepsy, exhausted and he almost fainted several times during the g...

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(SWEDEN) Buskin' City is a unique busking development for Sweden with a soon to be launched website for pro street performers. Every participating city provides a pitch for an artist. It can be a street corner, on a square, or on a main shopping street.Bringing culture to unused public space is the main theme. National and International buskers book themselves easily on a city's calendar.

Halmstad, Varberg, Kalmar, Kristianstad, Jonkoping, Landskrona, and Vastervik are among the 7 cities that have signed up with more expected to join the movement. Each city grants a travel refund up to 1500SEK.

With new approximations about busking popping up almost daily, be sure to include this in your book of ideas. See if you can dream up new and interesting approaches to busking like the one above.

For more information,...

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(ST. LOUIS) Remember collecting baseball cards as a kid? Now you can collect busker trading cards of all the wonderful street-performers in St. Louis.Thanks to Board Bill #181, busking and street-performing is now legal in St. Louis. They are now buskers to be memorabilia-ized! And collected! And traded!

It all came about when the city raised the busker fee in order to monitor buskers. Huh? That's exactly what buskers Fred Walker and Nick Pence said - along with the ACLU when it heard of such a preposterous notion.

Now that a wrong has been righted and the laughter has subsided, the buskers may be memoralized as a collector's card. The busker game includes finding each artist performing and having them sign their card. The winner gets featured in an upcoming street-performer festival.

It's a fun idea....

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Gatecrashers: The World Buskers Festival is being gatecrashed by street performers eager to cash in on the crowds attracted by the popular Christchurch event.

Heymoonshaker, a guitar and beatboxing act, set themselves up on a street corner yesterday afternoon to take advantage of the crowds.

"If the festival is a boat, then we are on skis behind it trying to get as much out of it as we can," gatecrashing British beatboxer Crowe said.

British travellers Crowe and guitarist Andrew Balcon met in Nelson and decided to perform in Christchurch to raise money for their world travels.

"We thought we would be able to perform in between sets in the Square, but they wouldn't let us," Balcon said.

Festival director Jodi Wright has taken a liberal approach to the busker pilot fish cruising in the wake of the festival shark.

"It is too hard to try to police them. Unless...

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