Turismo Vivencial

SMA!: ACCELERATING SMALL FESTIVALS. OPEN CALL FOR TRAINING & EDUCATION PROGRAMME, ONLINE AND DURING TALLINN MUSIC WEEK 2023

A socially, financially and environmentally sustainable business model is the objective of SMA – Small Festivals Accelerator. The boutique festivals Ypsigrock (Sicily, Italy), Haldern Pop (Germany) and D Festival / Password Production (Macedonia) have united to respond to common challenges; by training volunteers, creating professional infrastructure and perspective, developing tourism and strengthening the relationship with all sorts of stakeholders, on a strongly value oriented background. SMA is co-funded by Creative Europe and is carried out in partnership with Music Estonia, Melting Pro (Italy) and Turismo Vivencial (Spain). The group has developed a unique capacity building programme around Tallinn Music Week ’23, now open for applications.

Music is a fundamental part of our wellbeing, going to concerts and festivals an important element of our societies’ culture and socialization. Indeed, the music ecosystem cannot be imagined without its vast number of – very diverse – festivals. It is mostly the small, the ‘boutique’ events that contribute significantly by creating a cultural and social impact through introducing new talent and making taste, involving the local communities, translating social values from theory to reality and finally by creating unforgettable moments on and off stage.

It takes a particular enthusiasm that goes beyond financial reward to organize these events, though they need attention to sustainability and require readiness to innovate, in order to stay alive in the competitive environment of the Cultural and Creative Industries.

Often located in characteristic but remote areas, such festivals have all sorts of stakeholders, including the music business, the fans and festival-goers, institutions, policy makers, funding bodies, the tourism and hospitality business, food & beverage, fashion & lifestyle, the local community and – last but not least – the community of people who are actively involved in the festival.

These ambitious events are impossible to sustain without the passionate volunteers, the locals, but also the ones attracted from afar. For some it is and remains a hobby, for others it becomes more: they gain specific work experience and develop a new possible professional vision, even in places where there is no infrastructure of Cultural and Creative Industries yet. In some cases, the management teams are also characterized by charitable volunteer involvement. What unites all of them is being socially integrated in a value driven group of people.

SMA – Small Festival Accelerator’s keyword is sustainability: addressing problems and learning from best practices, training and education of all layers of the organization and sharing knowledge shall not only accelerate the project partners’ events, but also positively impact the entire festival community.

BUILDING CAPACITY:

Capacity building is the heart of SMA. The project offers, in various steps, an exclusive training programme for the next generations of live events professionals, selected from present or future volunteers of the participating partners’ events.

SMA particularly tackles a series of hot topics connected to the sustainability of small festivals, with special attention to the ones happening in peripheral areas. The training programme contains event-specific topics such as logistics, human resources, communication, production, admin, booking and the live music sector in general, but also the greater picture: financial, social and ecological sustainability, development of professional infrastructure, professional perspectives, the relationship with private and public stakeholders, creation of tourism. All shall lead to the development of a scalable business model which allows the partners to revise their own one, to develop one, and finally to share the outcome with the community of festival organizers.

Preparatory online courses will be held throughout the month of April 2023, balancing the knowledge levels of the applicants and partners. Besides technical questions and terminology, the lessons will give introductions to the different topics mentioned above, and will be run by the project partners by leveraging their different specializations and skills, as well as by inviting external experts.

An international 5 day training course will take place, in person, in Tallinn, Estonia, from 9th to 13th May, involving participants and the partners’ teams in exclusive frontal teaching lessons, panels and keynotes held by all partners and invited, specialized experts. These will be followed throughout the afternoon by interactive workgroups to dive deeper into the project’s specific topics and develop interesting and innovative ways of application. The training course will happen in synergy with Tallinn Music Week 2023.

Capacity building events addressing the wider community of volunteers will be held by the project partners between late May and the first half of June 2023, celebrating the motto ‘sharing is caring’. The experience gathered in the courses will be shared in specifically built workshops and hence contribute to a greater consciousness and interest of the volunteers, and stimulate the interest of new arrivals to the festival community.

Volunteering at the summer and autumn festivals organized by the partners involved in the project will let the participants apply the skills they have learned in real life.

SMA! is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
More info: https://www.smaproject.eu/