EU SMART COMPOSER Transnational Meeting

The transnational meeting of the EU SMART COMPOSER project took place on 30-31 March at the Abbaye Aux Dames in Saintes, France.

EU SMART COMPOSER is a biannual Erasmus + project that is developing a practical tool to facilitate knowledge transfer between music teachers and their students to improve their employability.

The international consortium behind EU SMART Composer consists of Coompanion Göteborg ek. för (Sweden), the coordinating entity, Consorzio Materahub Industrie Culturali e Creative (Italy), Abbaye aux Dames – Lacite musicale-Saintes (France), Le Laba (France), RESEO– European Network for Opera and Dance Education (Belgium) and Wazo Coop (Spain).

The activities, in an informal way, started on the afternoon of Tuesday 30th March with a meeting of all the people who were going to be present at the following two days of meetings. During the meeting, there was the opportunity to meet in person some participants who did not have the opportunity to visit Saintes at the previous meeting held in September, as well as to thoroughly plan the work plan.

Of course, we had the opportunity to meet again the wonderful building of the Abbaye aux Dames, a place where heritage and music can be breathed in every corner.

The morning of 30 March began with a general introduction to the evolution of the project and with the focus on the work of Train of Trainers that was to take place during the stay in Saintes.

Omar Shahryar from the RESEO organisation began to work on the content of the first Train of Trainers module, which consisted of an explanation of the project itself, as well as the welcome and the methodology that will be provided to the future Trainers.

The morning session continued to develop with different processes of co-creation of the content, a tone that would be maintained throughout the meeting.

On Wednesday afternoon, Abbaye aux Dames and Le Laba were in charge of developing the second module «Branding and Marketing», led by music branding expert Emily Gonneau and supported by Antoine Zenoni. It was an excellent opportunity to learn first-hand about the needs and challenges of future composers in the music industry and market, always from a social point of view.

The next day, the 31st of March, started with the presentation of module 2 «Empowerment and leadership» by Coompanion, led by Ebba Westerberg and Björn Granat. An interesting and interactive session, where the possibilities of empowerment and its importance in building a solid career for composers were investigated.

The last afternoon session was led by José Luis Díaz from Wazo Coop, Roberta Capozucca and Carlo Ferreti from Matera Hub. The corresponding module was «Cooperative Entrepreneurship», where in addition to developing the theme and talking about the benefits and resilience of the Social Economy, there was the opportunity to co-create a series of very useful tools for teachers and students.

We also had the online presence of Diana Ghinea from Coompanion, Marta Lozano Molano from Wazo Coop and Mikko Laamanen from Reseo.

Undoubtedly an intense but extremely productive meeting, the results of which will be put into practice next September in Matera (Italy).