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PROJECT MINSTREL «MUSIC NETWORK SUPPORTING TRANS-NATIONAL EXCHANGE AND DISSEMINATION OF MUSIC RESOURCES AT EUROPEAN LEVEL»

MINSTREL

MINSTREL: MusIc Network Supporting
T
rans-national exchange and dissemination of music Resources at European Level

"Minstrels" were early time wandering musicians in European cities and countries, performing historical, tale and epic songs.

 

Project supported by the
Culture
programme of theEuropean Commission
Project's Duration: 3 years (Mai 2012-April 2015)

Co-funded by the European Union

This page is informative. The project website is

www.minstrel.eu

Preamble
Music Culture and creativity is an important aspect of the European Identity. In parallel the music industry employs over 600 000 people across the European Union and represents a global market of more than 40 billion euro. Music industry is an industry in mutation with new consumption methods to be anticipated, new economic models to discover, new activities and new professions to define.  Thus we really need to join forces and undertake specific common activities targeting the richness of the European music sector, the increased mobility of cultural workers and the increased circulation of art works at European level, in the perspective of European integration.
In this frame MINSTREL comes to overcome the following existing problems:
a) a lot of music material while is collected and digitized at national level, is not easy accessible be the European citizens and professionals
b) rich music civilizations and live local music movements of several European countries are not well known to other countries and
c) while music is an international language, the musicians are active mainly only in their countries and have not the necessary opportunities to have recognition or a presence to other counties.

The proposed solution
Through MINSTREL project, organizations, experienced on the situation of the music sector on their countries, are building a productive cooperation network, that will implement a series of actions targeting the the transnational mobility of musicians (composers, performers, professionals), as well as the circulation and dissemination of European music. The overall objective of the project is the promotion of music diversity at European level in the frame of the related UNESCO convention.

The partners
In MINSTREL are participating 12 organization from 11 countries. Most partners are official local Music Information Centres, playing a very important role on the music life of each country:

IEMA Institute for Research on Music and Acoustics - Greek Music Documentation Centre
Slovakia Music Centre Slovakia
polmic Polish Composers' Union - Polish Music Information Centre
SIGIC Slovene Music Information Centre Society
mica mica - music austria
CZ Czech Music Information Centre
Panteion Panteion University, Department of Communication, Media and Culture
Latvia Latvian Music Information Centre
Cyprus Cyprus Music Information Centre
Croatia Zagreb Concert Management  - Croatian Music Information Centre
MISO Portuguese Music Research & Information Centre
Flanders Flanders Music Centre (Belgium)

The implementation of MINSTREL is supported by:
IAMIC International Association of Music Information Centres-IAMIC
YPPO General Directorate of Contemporary Culture of the Hellenic Ministry of Education and Culture

Project Activities
The proposed activities either have concrete products to serve the objectives of the project or they are series of innovative transnational events that have the objective to explore and create concrete models that can serve in the future to third organizations as well fulfilling the goals of the project.
The project activities (apart from the administration) could be distinguished in three main tasks:

In details:

Trans-national circulation of music works.
Creation of a cooperation platform for European Music Organisations based on internet services and targeting the promotion and dissemination of the Music Organisations digital archives.
This task will be implemented through the development of an internet platform in order to exploit the archival music material (as described above) of the Music Organisations involved on the project.

Trans-national mobility actions
The objective of this task is to promote the mobility of musicians across the borders of countries as well as to promote the music of one county to another. The objectives will be served through the implementation of the following actions:

Digital Promotion of music ensembles.
The proposed activity is a digital information database of local music ensembles and aims to support the music ensembles enhancing their international promotion, by offering to them the opportunity to be active outside the borders of their country of origin.

Artists'-composers' residency programme
The residency programmes are very common on visual arts but less common in the field of music. This section has the scope to reinforce this process in the domain of music. New residency programmes will be developed by the participating countries. The residency programmes will be designed for performers or composers, one person or groups (artists' colonies) and will be of duration one week to one month.

Organisation of a series of transnational and mobility events.
The objective of this activity is to promote the music or the musicians of one country to another participating country. Participating countries will collaborate to help each other to fulfill it.

"Music exchanges" - During a selected - "celebration" period as series of events are organized in one country promoting the music of another country.

"Music platform" events promoting the musicians of a specific country This type of event has as goal to make more well know the musicians, ensembles and the music repertoire to the local and international music industry and managers in order to support their mobility. Such an event is the organisation of music ensembles promotion festival with participation of all important local ensembles.

Collective transnational events
This type of events will be organized from one partner but with contribution of all partners were every partner will propose music material from its country. Such events will be: a) Music Documentary Festival b) Electronic/Computer Music Festival c) Thematic festivals (jazz, trans, rock, ethnic, pop, reggae etc).

Exchange of Professionals in the music sector
The aim of this action regards the interchange of experience of professionals working on the music sector by helping their mobility from one institution to the other.

Collection and dissemination of local music industry and management information
This action has as goal to develop a list of all local music events organizers, promoters and producers. This list will be hosted in a digital database so that it can be available to ensembles and musicians at several countries and in this way to help their mobility.

Cooperation and Dissemination actions

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We believe that trough the established music organisations network and the more than 30 planed actions and events in the frame of the project, important experience and results will be produced that will promote in short and long term the transnational circulation of music, the transnational mobility of musicians, and moreover will thus support the European music diversity.

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 See or Download MINSTREL project leaflet

Project website www.minstrel.eu