Back to list
Previous Participant: Lobke Aelbrecht
"The highlight of the exchange (apart from the amazingly inspiring conversations) was the hothouse showcase festival, where I got to experience what the artists of the current edition are working on, together with about 50 other invited professionals from the UK music scene"
From: Jazzlab (Belgium)
To: Manchester Jazz Festival (UK)
Dates: 23 - 26 May 2022
I choose mjf mainly because of their groundbreaking work with hothouse, an artist development programme they have been running for 6 editions. Hothouse is very similar to Stepping Stone, a project I have been trying to set up with JazzLab, so I wanted to learn how to tackle this best. We purposely choose to do the exchange on the least busy days of the mjf, so that Steve and Helen would have enough free time and headspace to talk to me. I had several meetings with them, together and separately, and Helen (who has a background in talent development) even invited me to her home in Buxton, so we could talk about this all day.
They told me all about how the hothouse project (and by extension their other programma Soundcheck) is run. The most important thing to take home from this is definitely how they do the selection procedure. They really take their time to decide, to talk to the different artists, and they showed me that those interviews/coaching sessions are beneficial for the artists already. So the project starts before it has started. Moreover, this is not just beneficial for the artists, but also shows your funders that you reach more artists than are officially on the programme. We also talked about the programme itself, the workshops, the mentors and how to document the process, and how to show funders that this is a very important and valuable project, that empowers artists in a sustainable way. I learned how important the vocabulary is that is used, how to properly express what it is about, and how to do the monitoring and evaluation, another crucial part that is often forgotten. As I was there during the festival, I evidently helped out a bit with the production on the concert evenings themselves, and learned more about working with different partners/venues and what this means for your programme, and ways to increase the audience last minute.
The highlight of the exchange (apart from the amazingly inspiring conversations) was the hothouse showcase festival, where I got to experience what the artists of the current edition are working on, together with about 50 other invited professionals from the UK music scene. It was stunning to see what these artists presented. The showcases did enormous credit to the hothouse programme. I can't wait to see more.
To: Manchester Jazz Festival (UK)
Dates: 23 - 26 May 2022
I choose mjf mainly because of their groundbreaking work with hothouse, an artist development programme they have been running for 6 editions. Hothouse is very similar to Stepping Stone, a project I have been trying to set up with JazzLab, so I wanted to learn how to tackle this best. We purposely choose to do the exchange on the least busy days of the mjf, so that Steve and Helen would have enough free time and headspace to talk to me. I had several meetings with them, together and separately, and Helen (who has a background in talent development) even invited me to her home in Buxton, so we could talk about this all day.
They told me all about how the hothouse project (and by extension their other programma Soundcheck) is run. The most important thing to take home from this is definitely how they do the selection procedure. They really take their time to decide, to talk to the different artists, and they showed me that those interviews/coaching sessions are beneficial for the artists already. So the project starts before it has started. Moreover, this is not just beneficial for the artists, but also shows your funders that you reach more artists than are officially on the programme. We also talked about the programme itself, the workshops, the mentors and how to document the process, and how to show funders that this is a very important and valuable project, that empowers artists in a sustainable way. I learned how important the vocabulary is that is used, how to properly express what it is about, and how to do the monitoring and evaluation, another crucial part that is often forgotten. As I was there during the festival, I evidently helped out a bit with the production on the concert evenings themselves, and learned more about working with different partners/venues and what this means for your programme, and ways to increase the audience last minute.
The highlight of the exchange (apart from the amazingly inspiring conversations) was the hothouse showcase festival, where I got to experience what the artists of the current edition are working on, together with about 50 other invited professionals from the UK music scene. It was stunning to see what these artists presented. The showcases did enormous credit to the hothouse programme. I can't wait to see more.
