The Medinea Method

Project summary

Following on from the experience of the Medinea (Mediterranean Incubator for Emerging Artists) network, four cultural institutions from Portugal, Italy, Malta and Turkey joined the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and its academy to found a strategic partnership. Its purpose is to develop a training method for collective musical production in Europe and Mediterranean countries. Since 2011, the Euro-Mediterranean zone has faced new geo-political challenges, added to which are the challenges concerning migration crises, which urgently require recognition of the different cultures present in our territory and construction of inter-cultural dialogue. The Medinea network’s experience represents a decisive step in the musical sector and thus contributes to this ambition. The project aims to implement, disseminate and prolong an innovative training method outside the formal education circuits, based on intercultural collective composition in the specific field of improvised music originating from the Mediterranean tradition, for young artists from different countries in the Euro-Mediterranean zone. This learning process is based on diversity, inter-cultural dialogue, and re-appropriation of a common cultural heritage. 135 young artists will be trained in three years and the network will disseminate the method to several hundred professionals and young artists throughout this period, especially thanks to the e-learning course that the partners will realise. The proposed method will be directed at young people in the Euro-Mediterranean space who have had formal or non-formal musical education. It will give them the opportunity to join a community of young artists and professionals, and acquire knowledge required for collective production and the tools necessary to set it up. Over the three years, seven creative sessions will take place in five different countries, which will strengthen the method and knowledge with local input and bring together groups, which are diverse and rich in their approach to producing music. For each session, a module of the method will be set up, documented, and integrated to the e-learning course. At the halfway point, a conference, Les Rencontres Medinea, will be held to disseminate the e-learning course and share the project’s results with a wider circle of professionals. Lastly, this method will be disseminated across the Medinea network, networks of young artists and professional networks in which Medinea members are active. The project will be co-ordinated and implemented by Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, an institution that has organised numerous European and Mediterranean projects. The partners will meet at each training session to assess the results of each step and adjust the next ones. The Medinea network will swing into action for further recruitment of young artists and distribute the project’s outcome. This project will lead to a strong partnership between institutions, which are already connected and share values and objectives in favour of education and professional integration of young artists. It will strengthen their skills in European co-operation. It will provide the opportunity to develop an inclusive learning method and to deploy it among the partners. It will facilitate the professional integration of 135 young participants and hundreds of the e-learning course’s users, but also their possibility to develop their own projects. The culture embodied by youth will thus be able to play its role by encouraging inter-cultural dialogue in our societies and recognition of the position of each person, leading to the writing of a common future.