Music Cities Network at Slash

21 November 2018

Before join­ing us at Slash, Lena Ing­wersen gave us insights about her job as a pro­ject man­ager at Music Cit­ies Net­work. She will join us at Slash for their con­fer­ence which will explore music and its role in urb­an strategies and how city infra­struc­tures can cre­ate links between music and oth­er domains, such as the social and eco­nom­ic sectors.

  • Slash EMI
Music Cities Network at Slash

Music Cities Network at Slash

Before join­ing us at Slash, Lena Ing­wersen gave us insights about her job as a pro­ject man­ager at Music Cit­ies Net­work. She will join us at Slash for their con­fer­ence which will explore music and its role in urb­an strategies and how city infra­struc­tures can cre­ate links between music and oth­er domains, such as the social and eco­nom­ic sectors.

1) Can you tell us a bit about “Music Cit­ies Net­work” please?

Music Cit­ies Net­work is a public/private net­work ded­ic­ated to improv­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion and cooper­a­tion, shar­ing research and know­ledge, explor­ing policy and advocacy, and net­work­ing for policy makers, city lead­ers and all oth­er music city stake­hold­ers around the world. The net­work is focus­ing on research & policy; artist‑, busi­ness- & city devel­op­ment & pub­li­city. The activ­it­ies include pub­lic­a­tions, work­shops, pan­els, show­cases, and pro­ject devel­op­ment, such as the Women in Music Index and the Res­id­ency Pro­gram for artists and young music busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als. Fram­ing the network’s hol­ist­ic approach work­ing, col­lab­or­at­ing and enabling exchange on the city, busi­ness and artist level. The net­work was ini­ti­ated by Ham­burg Music Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation (IHM) & Sound Dip­lomacy in 2016. Cur­rent mem­bers are Aar­hus, Ber­lin, Ham­burg, Gronin­gen, Nantes & Sydney.

2) What does your work as the pro­ject man­ager include?

Since, I star­ted my pos­i­tion as pro­ject man­ager for the Music Cites Net­work in 2016 I enjoy my role as a facil­it­at­or at the inter­face between dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al and music­al policies. I am respons­ible for enabling the ideas of the mem­ber cit­ies, facil­it­at­ing con­tent, pro­jects, and top­ics for the net­work, and man­aging and expand its affairs, com­mu­nic­a­tion and members.

3) What is your take on why cit­ies need a music strategy and what do you expect from this pan­el to be discussed/revealed?

A music strategy can be seen as vital part of cul­tur­al city devel­op­ment and the sus­tain­able acknow­ledg­ment for decision makers and politi­cians that music is a “need to have” — rather than “nice to have”. Its the polit­ic­al path­way to secure afford­able pro­duc­tion- and rehears­al facil­it­ies, to cre­ate more music busi­ness oppor­tun­it­ies loc­ally and also inter­na­tion­ally and to keep the city attract­ive for new tal­ent, audi­ences and tour­ists. As the world now is our mar­ket­place, glob­al­iz­a­tion & digit­al­iz­a­tion cre­ate both oppor­tun­it­ies and chal­lenges. Thats why its more import­ant than ever to col­lab­or­ate and learn from each oth­er on all the dif­fer­ent levels. The pan­el shall reveal the value of a music strategy for a city and also for its artists and music envir­on­ment and show the bene­fits a world wide net­work of music cit­ies can enable in this context.

Music Cities Network at Slash