Planet Ears Festival – “Sounds of Ukraine”
Thank you Alte Feuerwache Mannheim and Rim Irscheid for inviting us to join this year’s Planet Ears Festival! Tom will take part in the Symposium „Sounds of Ukraine“, joining a discussion with Mariia Vorotilina (Voices Ukraine / Theater Kampnagel), Larysa Kharchenko (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen IfA) and Rim Irscheid (King’s College London) to talk about how projects aimed at dispelling prejudices against post-Eastern communities changed in the course of the war, and how they manage to support cultural workers in Germany as well as in Ukraine.
Pop meets Jobcenter
For 4 months, customers and employees of the Jobcenter Mannheim wrote and rehearsed their very own song under our direction. On July 8, the project "Pop meets Jobcenter" culminated in a well-attended final concert at Musikpark Mannheim.
1st Mannheim Street Art Festival
We are very proud of this year's collaboration with NEXT Mannheim and Mannheim Music Commission e.V, creating Mannheim's first Street Art Festival and bringing over 200 musicians to the city center, turning it into a big stage!
Music as the key to intercultural dialogue and change
We support young creatives on their way into the international music industry.
For more than 4 years we have been initializing and supervising projects that are designed to help young creatives professionalize and at the same time open up an international network for them. We focus on a combination of intense creative work and the exchange of profound business know-how.
To this end, we work in a wide variety of formats – from workshops to camps to podcasts, from analog to hybrid to digital, from songwriting to team building to design thinking. So far, we have supported over 200 creatives from 6 countries and work with a wide pool of international experts.
We develop and implement new formats for and with cultural institutions, cities and municipalities.
When designing new projects, we attach great importance to identifying the individual motivational triggers of our potential participants. This enables us to implement programs that create added value for each individual and at the same time generate a sustainable long-term effect for the whole group based on shared values. Our projects have been supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, Fonds Soziokultur, Stiftung EVZ, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, among others.
In 2020, our work was awarded the Ideenstark Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg, and in 2021 we received the Civil Match Award of the Goethe-Institut for our collaboration with Kyiv Contemporary Music Days.
Our Projects
“Pop meets Jobcenter” is a project of OSTAR Music Network in cooperation with Jobcenter Mannheim and is supported by Fonds Soziokultur. In the project “Pop meets Jobcenter”, participants with and without previous musical knowledge form a band under the guidance of professional musicians, learn to play instruments and write their own songs together in the process. In this way, they can discover their creativity and live it out in the group. After a series of rehearsal dates, the result will be presented in a final concert on 08.07.2022. at Musikpark Mannheim.
Foto: Sophie-Marie Balz – BALZ//Fotografie
From 15. to 16.07.2022 the Mannheim Street Art Festival brought 32 acts on 11 stages to Mannheim’s city center for the first time. A low-entry cultural experience that demonstrated how art can contribute to the sustainable transformation of metropolitan areas.
We planned and implemented the project together with NEXT Mannheim and the Mannheim Music Commission e.V..
Mannheim Street Art Festival was funded by the State of Baden-Württemberg.
Foto: Daniel Wetzel
What is EASTxWEST?
EAST x WEST is a digital songwriting camp bringing together creatives from Eastern and Western Europe. During 2,5 days you will meet people from all over the world and create new music in small songwriting-teams for real pitches from publishers like BMG or Warner Music. During this process you will be coached by the professionals Antonia Rug (Novaa), Laura Kloos (FYDA) and Ivo Schot (Subterranean Street Society). After the camp you will not only have made lasting connections but also will get feedback on your tracks from professional A&Rs.
Who can apply?
We are looking for 12 songwriters and (electronic) music producers who are open to new experiences, want to try writing for other artists and work with people from all over the world. You should be able to record yourself at home with a DAW, have a stable internet connection and a device to join video calls. This year we are able to accept applications from Germany, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Russia.
How can I apply?
To apply please fill out this Form until the 12th of November. We will get back to you until 16.11.2021 to let you know if you are able to join the camp.
How much does it cost?
As we want to make the opportunity accessible to as many people as we can to form meaningful connections, participating in the camp and the masterclasses is for free.
Why is it for free?
We are able to create this camp without a fee for participants because the project OSTAR Music Network 2021 is funded by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany. OSTAR Music Network’s goal is to foster creative talent and connect musicians and aspiring music business professionals from Eastern and Western Europe.
EAST x WEST is brought to you by OSTAR Music Network and supported by Auswärtiges AMT.
EMBRACE 2020 is a dialogue-project of Music Commission Mannheim e.V., Music Export Ukraine and OSTAR Music Network aiming to connect young talents and experts across borders, talking about constructive take-aways for 2021.
EMBRACE 2020 will showcases 5 interviews focusing on the topics: live industry, music journalism, music production, artist management and being an artist in 2020. The talks aim to highlight personal best-practices from both sides and spread good ideas on how to take on 2021 as creative.
The Project was implemented within the “MEET UP! German-Ukrainian Youth Encounters” programme with support from the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ). The opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of the Foundation EVZ. The author is solely responsible for the content.
In 2018 we launched our music business education programme Ural Music Camp in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Together with our partner Natalia Shmelkova (Head of Center of Social Monitoring and Youth Issues Yekaterinburg & Project Coordinator Ural Music Night Festival), a team situated in Yekaterinburg as well as a growing group of European experts in music education and the music industry we were able to make this a successful annual event.
By creating this programme, we offer talented people a platform for their work, provide access to specialist knowledge and find new ways of evaluating their creative potential.
Each year, Ural Music Camp offers 50 Russian musicians and people working in the music industry the possibility to come together for one week and simulate the process of the music industry. Creating original songs in new formations with people they’ve never met before, recording and performing these songs, and developing a marketing strategy for their new material.
In addition, participants may be part of an exchange program between Russia and Germany in collaboration with various German partners, and are supported with further online workshops and consulting throughout the year.
What others say
Stasya Lisitsina
Participant
“Ural Music Camp helped me become a professional artist. Before, I had finished my music studies in Yekaterinburg. But here I began to understand what is necessary to become a holistic artist. A lot has happened in the last year: I was part of a TV show, I started writing songs, I released my first EP and recorded a music video with friends.”
Rutger Martens
Coach
“What moved me the most was the difference between how you see the participants on the first day, then you do the band coaching with them and they get better and better and then you see them at the final concert and they perform above all expectations. You can really see the result of a week of work and their joy and their effort and energy and then at the last concert it all comes together - that’s just great.”
Tatiana Sokolova
Participant
“Ural Music Camp helped me to accept myself and my own vision of music. When I came back from it, I realised that I needed to look inside myself, not around me. Since then, I know where to go next. Memories of that time still feed me with energy in moments of crises and give me strength to move into the directions of my dreams.”
Natalia Shmelkova
Founder Ural Music NIght Festival & UMC
“We want to show that music can be a profession. The alumni of the camp can develop new projects, and these projects will develop the Russian music industry. The main result should be a community between Europe and Russia and also to open the window to Europe for young Russian artists to play music together with other European people.”
Udo Dahmen
Director of Popakademie Baden-Württemberg
“If you have 50-60 participants every year, after a couple of years you have reached a critical mass and this is very interesting in terms of network. In the end it’s all about internationalisation. The idea is always to win partners from different countries - from Russia to Europe and the other way around. This is something that accelerates not only the relations but also the music.”
Dmitry Malinovsky
Participant
“Ural Music Camp taught me to look beyond the boundaries of the regular approach to songwriting and arrangement.”
Maxim Khrychev
Participant
“For me, Ural Music Camp is a place to learn to work with people, to communicate with people. One of the greatest things about the camp is the love from our teachers - it’s a place where we can make mistakes.”
Blog
Pop meets Jobcenter 2022
Am 08.07. fand das Abschlusskonzert des Projektes “Pop meets Jobcenter” im Musikpark Mannheim statt. Über 4 Monate hinweg hatten sich insgesamt 14 Kund*innen und Mitarbeiter*innen des Jobcenter Mannheim in einem Proberaum getroffen und unter Leitung von den Künstler*innen Louisa Wenderoth,...
