SPOR is a partner in a big EU project about diversity

Under the title Sounds Now, nine of Europe's leading festivals and cultural centers for new music will promote more variety and diversity in the way music is curated. SPOR festival is the Danish partner in the multi-year project, which is financed by the EU's Creative Europe programme.

A group of the largest and most recognized festivals in Europe within new music and sound art have joined forces to run the four-year project Sounds Now, which has received support from the EU's cultural pool Creative Europe.

10 years of history
Sounds Now started 10 years ago, when SPOR helped start the NICAF network for 8-10 European festivals from all over Europe. It began as a collegial community with the aim of having some international festival colleagues to link with..

The network had a common understanding that there was a need for change in relation to the relationship with the audience and a greater diversity when it comes to composers, cultures and the festivals' own understanding of the scene. That was the starting point for Sounds Now. The entire network joined the project, and a few new partners joined.

A distorted music environment
Among other things, SPOR is the initiator of a project in 2021 with an Austrian composer and a sociologist who has worked with music culture in Bolivia. They create a production with a focus on, among other things, colonial history and European cultural practice, where music has been used as a means to convert and "civilize" other cultures. But it has also been particularly important for SPOR to ensure that Sounds Now must develop the participating festival managers and allow their own practice to be pushed. SPOR expects that the project will provide more knowledge and inspiration for working with other types of composers, cultures, segments than those that the festivals otherwise have easy access to.

Facts about Sounds Now:

Sounds Now is a multi-pronged program which focuses on new and upcoming artists and curators as a sustainable way to promote inclusion in contemporary music, experimental music and sound art.

Sounds Now is a network of nine festivals and cultural centers that will launch a program of workshops, mentoring, productions, experiments and research that explores the social and artistic impact of the curator's role in contemporary music. These activities will contribute to a discourse on music curation, which is lacking today, by providing experience to the performers in a wide range of social and cultural contexts. It must ensure a diversification of the existing group of curators by creating new concrete paths into the industry for people "from the outside".

The program creates actions targeting participants across Europe. It includes coaching, collaborative laboratories with established international curators, tests of innovative forms of curation, the creation of new works and networks, an official learning course and research.

Partners:

BE                  Musica, Neerpelt (Coordinator)
BE                  Wilde Westen, Kortrijk
BE                  Festival van Vlaanderen Vlaams-Brabant vzw (also known as Transit), Leuven
DK                 SPOR festival, Arhus
FI                   Viitasaaren Kesäakatemia Ry (also known as Time of Music), Viitasaari
NL                 Stichting November Music, ’s-Hertogenbosch
NO                 Stiftelsen Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (also known as Ultima), Oslo
UK                 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Huddersfield
GR                 Ariona Hellas (also known as Onassis Cultural Centre), Athen