“The Pop Venue as an Experimental Community Space”

WORM was delighted to participate in a new EU-funded project, “The Pop Venue as an Experimental Community Space”.

The project was carried out in partnership (alongside WORM), with Dabadaba (San Sebastian, ES), VK (Brussels, BE), Kvaka 22 (Belgrade, RS), Studenterhus Aarhus (Aargus, DK),  Termokiss (Pristina, XK ) and Elementarz dla mieszkańców miast (Krakow, PL).

“The Pop Venue as an Experimental Community Space” looked to develop alternative scenarios for the rapid and multifarious changes that small pop venues are currently dealing with. Specific attention was reserved for creating collaboration strategies that engaged marginalised and culturally diverse communities in their cities.

The consequences of Covid-19 have had a huge impact on small stages in Europe. Where many venues’ existences are threatened, others are more flexible, due to their small scale. They can find new ways to be meaningful to their local environments.

The project gave small pop venues the opportunity to reinvent themselves based on trusted core values, specifically when dealing with ongoing challenges around the development of new, heterogeneous partnerships and target groups; and those in relation to building public loyalty, correct representation of city communities and the resultant artistic development of the venue.

The result of the collaborations was a toolkit to be used by local governments and other pop venues when setting up partnerships with new (metropolitan) communities. A mini-documentary charted the ways of working and the results of the project. This documentary will be available on-line for use by other institutions and cultural producers.

The project was part of the EU’s Music Moves Europe: Boosting European Music Diversity and Talent initiative, “Co-operation of small music venues”. It ran from February 2021 until July 2022.

You can read the Basque and Spanish press releases from Dabadada here: Spanish version and the Basque version.