Discover the Music Moves Europe – Cooperation of Small Music Venues’ Projects

Through various activities such as meetings, seminars, workshops and events, the project will ensure increased competence among the project partners, form the basis for new collaboration structures, and provide increased visibility for the music scenes among the public and among public authorities.”

Partners: City of Bergen, Bergen Kunsthall, Landmark, Kulturhuset Østre, Borealis (NO)

Budget: €30 000 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

conducted to map the opportunities and challenges of the small venues. One of the goals is to also impact the way small music venues are seen by the local governments and reflect with them how surprisingly similar the issues the venues face in different countries are.

Additionally, the participating venues get a chance to visit each other’s places and learn from each other, discuss about the ways the venues are operating and expand their networks, which also helps to improve the exchange of artists between Estonia and Finland in the future.

Partners: Music Estonia (EE), LiveFIN (FI), Bar Loose (FI), Kultuuriklubi Tempel (EE), Genialistide Klubi (EE), Philly Joe’s Jazzclub (EE), Sveta Baar (EE), 45 Special (FI), G Livelab Helsinki (FI), Maanalainen (FI), Torvi (FI).

Budget: €50 000 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

Partners: A macho alfa – Associação Cultural, Maus Hábitos and La Melona

Budget: €50 000 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

with each other, sharing knowledge, achieving a high standard of quality and helping emerging artists, because music is the oxygen in our blood.
Grassroot venues have a cultural mission and they know what good music is, but they need help and need cooperation within the scene.

Music venues are disappearing due to gentrification, economic problems and/or political reasons, therefore bands have almost nowhere to play and develop their live performances early on in their careers. This situation had become even more polarized by COVID crisis.

Venues need to improve all sorts of skills, help each other and share the workload, and by improving their soft skills and cooperating with each other they can strengthen and make more independent the whole music scene. It has to start at the grassroots. Enlarge Europe wants to be a Europe-wide cooperation hub that actively provides knowledge in order to shift from harmful market-based competition into a healthy transcultural and transnational mutual assistance. »

Partners: Channel Zero from Ljubljana (SI), Nappali from Pécs (HU), Moszkva Kávézó from Oradea (RO), Kvaka 22 from Belgrade (RS), Zentropia from Senta (RS)

Deliverables: Audience Research Survey Template // Toolbox will be soon available

Budget: €70 000 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

test new business models and promote local music talents.

The project is a digital exchange program aimed to test the differences in venues’ business models, share the experience, learn the opportunities to cooperate in such a long distance between them and work together on the capacity building of staff and its local music community. Along with that, the organizers will support local talents in the times of uncertainty and ban of live music events with the series of streams aired in all 4 countries.

This will help artists to promote their music abroad and reach a potential new audience. As part of the project, organizers will test new business models on how to improve the communication and cooperation in the business triangle promoter — venue — artist. 

As a consequence of the pandemic, music venues have closed their doors, making it hard for their stuff to make ends meet and for artists to take the spotlight and reach potential new audiences. Venues have long ago became the ideas hubs and the instrument of creative progress around them. With this in mind project organizers would like to compare and re-think their business strategies with the help of technology, and help themselves stay afloat and their local music communities to grow.”

Partners: Podium Asteriks (NL), Belvédère Namur (BE), Firlej (PO), Mezzanine (UA)

Budget: €47 285 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

The project will professionalise the activities of the Leipzig’s live music scene network as a blueprint for similar initiatives in other cities. The action focuses on transnational knowledge exchange for capacity building, engages policy and administrative authorities and makes visible the role of venues in the cultural and creative ecosystem.

We want to develop and implement innovative concepts to make the nightlife of the future sustainable, economical and climate-friendly while improving the ability of small music venues to act in order to meet new challenges and improve the position of music venues in the long term.

The planned actions focus on transnational knowledge exchange, the search for sustainable ways of running venues, engage communication with political and administrative decision-makers and make the role of venues in the cultural, creative and economic spheres of influence more visible.

Leipzig’s music venues are thus empowered to maintain their contribution to cultural diversity and their function as a platform for young and emerging female artists, and to promote business development in an increasingly complex environment.”

Partners: Debreceni Campus (HU), University of Debrecen (HU), Cap 10100 (IT), Fontaine Palace (LV)

Budget: €70 000 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

label, based on the experiences of the 3 main partners of the project. This label would cover two missions:

• To highlight these projects to the public by presenting all that they represent beyond the concert activity.
• To enhance the value of these actors among partners by putting them in perspective with numerous European venues.”

Partners: Le Périscope (FR), Budapest Music Center (HU), Le Petit Faucheux (FR)

Budget: €27 000 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

This will be done through three main actions:

• Creating a platform where public institutions and offices involved in operating licenses share knowledge with the music venues. Supporting a constructive dialogue between these parties and the music venues about what can be improved upon.
• Educate venue operators and musicians about event management, promotion, and marketing with the main focus of reaching new audiences – young people and tourists. Emphasis will be placed on innovation and collaboration between the music venues.
• Shaping the collaboration between music venues in Reykjavík by establishing an association or formal organization to support further cooperation and ensure the continuation of the actions that have been initiated through the project.

Partners: Reykjavik Music City, Mengi, Gaukurinn, Hannesarholt and Dillon (Reykjavik, IS)

Budget: €30 000 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

the future, thus strengthening the often struggling live music venues in small and medium-sized European cities. Also on the agenda will be how to better involve the public in decisions about the lives of clubs, how a light music venue can become an integral part of the urban and university cultural ecosystem. We will also conduct a study on the role of involvement and participatory decision-making in the future of music clubs.

Partners: Debreceni Campus (HU), University of Debrecen (HU), Cap 10100 (IT), Fontaine Palace (LV)

Budget: €70 000 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

More on the project

collaborations will be a toolkit that can be used for local governments and fellow pop venues when setting up partnerships with new metropolitan communities.

“The Pop Venue as an Experimental Community Space” will look to develop alternative scenarios for the rapid and multifarious changes that small pop venues are currently dealing with. Specific attention and resources are reserved for creating collaboration strategies that engage marginalized and culturally diverse communities in their cities.”

Partners: WORM (Rotterdam, NL), Dabadaba (San Sebastian, ES), VK (Brussels, BE), Kvaka 22 (Belgrade, RS), Studenterhus Aarhus (Aarhus, DK), Termokiss (Pristina, XK) and Elementarz dla mieszkańców miast (Krakow, PL).

Deliverables: Toolbox will be soon available

Budget: €67 270 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)

address the survival difficulties of small music venues by establishing synergies between music spaces in Europe, to promote the role of small music venues and ensure their relevance and sustainability in European cities.

SCENERGIES is based on the identification of good practices among the five experienced small music venues from five European countries (France, Belgium, Croatia, North Macedonia and Spain), the transfer of these good practices through training activities and the dissemination of these competitive strategies to ensure a wide coverage of the project’s impact.

SCENERGIES focuses on the exchange of best practices among the partners involved, their improvement and the creation of a Toolkit and its related online Platform with instructions on the application of good practices for competitive small music venues, which can be used by the staff, trainers or managers of any music venue in Europe who is struggling to keep relevant in the current context or that simple wishes to improve the venue’s performance by carrying out innovative and ethical practices.”

Partners: Sala X (ES), Muziecklub 4AD (BE), MKC Skopje (MK), Mochvara (HR), Le Grand Mix (FR)

Deliverables: Access the Toolkit

Budget: €62 672 (part given by Music Moves Europe programme)