Rethinking music and reconciliation during a global pandemic

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We had a good thing going. Not to toot our own horn, but only two months ago an embassy representative approached us saying she had heard we were “the best project in Kosovo.”

Mitrovica Rock School worked: the project had shown that music can create new paths to mutual understanding, even in a highly complex post-conflict environment like Mitrovica. Students of the school, young people from the divided town’s Albanian and Serb communities, found a place where politics could be shut out and where ethnic identity was secondary. What matters at the Rock School is what you can do, what you like and what you’re like.

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The July training week through the eyes of Jana, our new communications trainee

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Hi! My name is Jana, I’m the new communications trainee at Mitrovica Rock School. I’m also a drummer at for the band Algorithm and a huge fan of Pink Floyd. I’m here to tell you about the July training week. It was my first time in a mixed band, so I was very excited for the training and rehearsals throughout the week. At first, my band was called ‘band 3’, but we ended up calling ourselves Algorithm.

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“Helping people find the same tools to express their thoughts and emotions that saved me all those years ago.”

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A blog by Rockacademie graduate and trainer Eefje Wevers

Roughly ten years ago, I decided I would apply to the Rockacademie in Tilburg, the Netherlands. I’d discovered that music let me express myself in ways nothing else could. Having been bullied for most of my childhood, I grew into a sad and insecure teen. Playing in bands were some of the happiest moments I had at that age. I felt safe and free in the rehearsal rooms with friends and teachers. I didn’t much like being on stage, scared that everyone in the audience would laugh at me over the smallest mistake, but the urge to share music always won out over the anxiety.

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Friends behind the camera: Interview with Music Connects filmmaker Stuart Jolley-Socea

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Stuart is a filmmaker and video producer from England, an interviewer, and a massive music fan. One of the founders of Hatched-MV, a music video and documentary production duo, Stuart has supported the Mitrovica Rock School by producing the video for Proximity Mine’s Set Me Free, and is now working on the feature documentary Music Connects: The Real School of Rock.

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