A Roundtable Session with Music Cities Awards Applicants
In a world where music is often celebrated for its power to entertain, the Music Cities Awards shines a spotlight on something even more profound - its ability to transform places and communities.
The Music Cities Awards is one of the most exciting initiatives that we run at Music Cities Events, as it serves as a database of projects from around the globe, each one demonstrating how music can be a catalyst for change.
These projects might focus on anything from revitalising a neglected neighbourhood to helping patients with their health, boosting tourism through music-themed initiatives, and much more. What they all have in common is a shared belief in music's power to make a difference.
This year, we decided to go beyond highlighting the nominees of each contest category and create additional bridges for the leaders of these projects to discover and engage with their peers regardless of whether they reached the final stage of the contest.
For this purpose, on August 20th, we held a virtual roundtable session with Music Cities Awards applicants to discuss “Music and Community Resilience.”
The session was introduced by Angharad Cooper, from the Centre of Music Ecosystems, who presented to the audience about the work of the Music Policy Resilience Network to start a conversation about resilience in music ecosystems.
The Music Policy Resilience Network, hosted by the Centre for Music Ecosystems, is a landmark transnational collaboration that aims to implement pro-music and culture policies that foster resilience in remote, rural, and isolated communities. Its work showcases the best examples of how music can be used as a tool for fighting poverty, promoting economic growth, and enshrining policy development in places that aren’t normally recognised as music hubs. Some of the cities that participate in it include: Nuuk (Greenland), Torshavn (Faroe Islands), Whitehorse, Yukon Territory (Canada), Bishkek, (Kyrgyzstan), and more.
Throughout the presentation, she highlighted some of the challenges that music ecosystems in remote places face, such as problems with talent retention and financing live music venues. She also presented some of the results that have been produced by the network, including incorporating music and the creative economy as a primary economic sector in Greenland’s constitutional reform, mapping underrepresented genres and training gaps in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, and producing a music growth action plan in Torshavn, Faroe Islands, in partnership with the Musicians Union.
After this first presentation, the group was split into two smaller rooms in which participants were given time to introduce themselves, discuss music and resilience, and address questions such as “How is music helping your community be resilient?” “What are some examples of projects using music to help the local community?” “How can their work be better supported?”.
Afterward, all participants joined the main room to share their takeaways from the session. Overall, attendees concluded that music can have a positive impact on the local community in many ways, including highlighting and transmitting cultural identity to the community, as well as generating jobs and bringing economic development. This led the way to highlight the work of “Association of the Movida of Historic Center of Asunción (Paraguay)”, a non-profit that brings together entertainment companies located in the historical centre of the capital city of Paraguay and is using music to reinvigorate the downtown of the city.
Participants also highlighted that overall artists should be receiving more support from their governments, as they are the most vulnerable ones in the music ecosystem. This topic allowed us to highlight the work of the Centro de Economía Creativa from Puerto Rico which through their Maniobra Programme is offering stable employment opportunities for artists, including a steady salary for 3 years, as well as a medical plan and technical advice.
Related to this topic, during the smaller group conversations Rob Van Wegen from ESNS (Eurosonic Noorderslag) highlighted how they use their music event to engage government officials to sensibilize them with the benefits of supporting the music ecosystem. Some of the ways in which they do this include inviting politicians to speak at their conference, giving them tours throughout the event, and also inviting the municipality to host events and meetings at the conference (which helps them to increase attendance and engagement rates).
Overall, it was an insightful session that helped Music Cities Awards participants join the global Music Cities conversation with their peers.
Some of the other attendees of the session included projects such as:
Musify Hospitality (Romania): A pioneering hybrid platform designed to empower DJs and artists hailing from Transylvania by facilitating their integration into the thriving hospitality sector while concurrently fostering their growth as artistic entities.
P4 (Croatia): A four-year-old organisation with a dual identity. P4 non-profit focused on community engagement through music events, support to emerging artists, and audience building through a diverse range of musical, cultural, and community-focused initiatives and programs.
ESNS (Eurosonic Noorderslag) (The Netherlands): A non-profit organisation and independent platform dedicated to the promotion and discovery of new European and Dutch music. Founded in 1986, ESNS hosts an annual four-day showcase festival and music conference across venues in Groningen, the Netherlands.
Amara Ann/Gospel Music Record Label (Nigeria): A music label using music to improve health and well-being by addressing challenges such as job loss, financial constraints, health issues, unemployment, and natural disasters.
Centro de Economía Creativa (Puerto Rico): A Puerto Rican non-profit organisation whose purpose is to provide management and training support to community-based projects that seek to generate economic, social, or cultural transformation.
Cantora Clara - Música com Consciência (Brazil): Its mission is to integrate music as a way of promoting mental health, self-knowledge, and well-being. With the aim of helping the community, it created an e-book with cross-curricular activities for public school teachers to use music as a tool for socio-emotional education, using music as teaching material.
Iris Kramer Quartet (Germany): The “Iris Kramer Quartet” is a band that puts female jazz musicians in the spotlight in which they would act as strong role models for the female instrumentalists of the younger generation.
Association of the Movida of Historic Center of Asunción (Paraguay): A non-profit civil entity that brings together entertainment companies located in the historical centre of the capital city of the Republic of Paraguay. It acts as a corporation with an advisory and collaborative role, aiming to promote and mediate relations with the administration of various companies and entities.
Muhonja Music & Entertainment (Kenya): A live music band and entertainment company that creates, records and releases music that addresses social issues with the aim of having a better society.
Main Stage Rehearsal Studios (Canada): With the high real estate prices, musicians have trouble securing a reliable space. Main Stage Rehearsal Studios provides a one-stop-shop solution to this problem by offering affordable studios that are clean and safe for musicians to rehearse, record, perform, and network.
Do you have a project that uses music to create an impact in your community? Then make sure to join the conversation at one of our upcoming events and apply for next year’s Music Cities Awards.
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