Our project addresses the need for innovation and especially the challenge of digitalisation in the live music sector, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While a few good practices exist, including both higher education institutes and live music organisations, to address those challenges, our project will gather both students and professionals from the live music sector to get trained on digital skills, thus increasing resilience towards the digital shift and adding value for a sustainable career. Besides, our project will build on a cross-disciplinary approach towards live music performances, connecting different disciplines of the music ecosystem (performers, sound and light specialists, PR and marketing specialists). Thus our five project objectives are: 1 Establishing a strategic partnership to develop and test a training methodology that will enhance digital and professional skills for artistic performances aimed at higher education students and professionals from the live music sector. 2 Strengthening cross-disciplinary collaborations between higher education institutes and the live music sector in 4 European countries. 3 Providing a test case for a work-based learning collaboration between higher education institutes and the live music sector to be implemented beyond this project 4 Providing practical guidance for higher education students and live music professionals in the development of digital skills in music production, distribution, promotion and audience engagement. 5 Measuring the effectiveness of this training methodology on the enhancement of students’ skills and increased audience engagement for live music performances organised in 4 European countries.
We applied to this project driven by the wish to bring a much-needed innovation in the live music sector and music education.To this end, we will develop and test a training methodology aimed at enhancing the digital skills and competencies of higher education students and live music professionals. With the project, we will address the five following needs. The live music sector faces a digital shift and has to deal with new target groups, fast-evolving consumption habits with a demand for digital consumption and multi-sensory experiences. This requires new skills in the training of the current and future professionals (i.e. students) of the live music sector for them to be able to create new performance formats that will enhance the relationship between the audience and the performers and reach new audiences. It is an EU-wide challenge that requires cross-border collaboration. Digital skills are not yet well integrated into higher education curricula: Students who aspire to work in the live music sector are not provided with the proper digital learning, practices, methods and tools to address the evolution the live music sector faces. The same higher education curricula do not yet fully integrate a cross-disciplinary approach. At the same time, tomorrow’s live music professionals will need to master various tools (for production, management and communication) to better adapt to the digital evolution of the sector and meet the audience’s demands. As the audience they will reach will likely become more European and cross borders due to the digitalisation of performance formats, it’s essential for systematic cross-border sharing of practices to happen in that field, yet it’s not the case. Work-based learning is still not a common practice within higher education institutes/universities, while this is beneficial for students who can have a more practical experience and for live music professionals who can profit from a new and fresh vision on their practices by today’s ‘digital native’ students. The different national higher music education systems are currently not yet well-connected, thereby hampering cross-border learning and exchanging practices.