New Project Launched to Connect Ex-Yugoslavia’s Sonic Youth

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We’re happy to announce the launch of a new project, Music Connects, that aims at connecting youth from diverse communities in Kosovo and Macedonia.

With support by Creative Twinning, a program of Netherlands Enterprise Agency, and other donors, MWB will partner with Fontys Rockacademie, Mitrovica Rock School, Roma Rock School and Music School Enterprise to activate youth and build sustainable alternatives for social inclusion through state-of-the art rock music education, production and promotion.

Increasing Cultural Participation & Cooperation

Music Connects will deliver thousands of music activities to Serb, Albanian, Macedonian, Roma and other youth. We will establish a recording studio in Mitrovica and train sound engineers in Mitrovica and Skopje, increasing cultural participation and cooperation and lowering the barrier for young bands to enter the region’s emerging music scene.

Video production house HATCHED-MV will produce a documentary on the project as an audiovisual testimony to the power of music to connect people across divides. HATCHED-MV previously supported our Mitrovica Rock School by working pro bono to create the music video Set Me Free for our ethnically mixed band Proximity Mine.

 

 

Music Connects includes:

  • Successful Mitrovica Rock School programs: mixed bands, mixed workshops, daily lessons, training weeks, concerts, summer schools
  • The integration of minority groups into the program of Music School Enterprise, Skopje’s leading commercial rock school
  • The start-up of Roma Rock School, following a successful pilot in 2017, aimed at integrating Roma youth in Macedonian society through inter-ethnic music programs
  • Joint summer schools bringing mixed bands of all three schools together
  • A professional studio at the Mitrovica Rock School for use by musicians and bands from both sides, and a home studio at the Roma Rock School
  • Sound engineering training for selected participants at all three schools
  • Training at all three schools by Fontys Rockacademie
  • A documentary film by HATCHED-MV, to be submitted to film festivals in the region and the EU

 

STREET ART AT THE MITROVICA ROCK SCHOOLSKOPJE SUMMER SCHOOL JOURNAL