Schedule of Industry event for music for young audiences

There is nothing finer, more exhilarating, more relentlessly exciting than putting on your musical space suit, leaping headlong into the Indiana Jones hyper ship and exploring the deeper infinity of the odd shaped legoland we call music. Finding stories, making shapes, expressing desires, swimming in the great magnificent sea of surreality...Come on in, the water’s lovely! 

How do you develop a practice aimed at children and young people?

At present, there are no specific courses or schools that focus on creating for young audiences. What role do music academies, production companies, performance venues and support organisations play in developing expertise? What role might they take on in the future?

In this session, we will discuss training, support and lifelong learning: how creators, organisations and institutions can together form an ecosystem in which artistic practices for young audiences can grow and deepen.

• In Dutch
• By Simon Segers & Anke Verslype

How can we give children and young people the opportunity to explore, imagine and experience their world in a creative way?

We will discuss co-creative and participatory approaches that actively involve young audiences in the creation of music and musical performances. We will explore how creators can develop new forms for and with children and young people, focusing on practices in which participation becomes the driving force for artistic innovation, and in which engaging with a young audience opens up new perspectives within the creative process.

In English

Working for children and young people means working with different age groups, but also working within diverse contexts: cultural backgrounds, familiarity with the arts, and differences between school and family audiences.

How do you create work that can appeal to that diversity without losing your own artistic identity? In this session, we will not start from barriers, but from inspiring practices. We will explore the universality and non-verbal nature of music, multilingual audiences and the opportunities for international exchange.

• In English
• By Jolien Van De Sande

How can you enhance the concert experience for young audiences without compromising the artistic work itself? In this session, we start from the premise that it is not only the performance itself, but also the context surrounding it, that determines how an audience experiences a concert.

We explore how creators, programmers and organisations develop such contexts without compromising the artistic autonomy of the work. What role can an educational or participatory framework play? How do you create a connection between the stage and the audience without reducing the artistic work to a mere tool? And how do you deal with the different expectations of a school audience versus a family audience?

• In Dutch
• By Ellen Jacobs