SEN NL exchange SPEAK YOUR MIND
Seven acts from six different countries have visited The Netherlands from the 22th till the 31th of August. They shared ideas, made music and performed at several places, such as Westerpop Festival (Delft), Stadspodium (Rotterdam), Popcentrale (Dordrecht) and the Animathor Boat (Rotterdam).
The exchange program is not only about performing, they also worked in mixed European formations on the theme: “Speak Your Mind”. Each new formation worked on a self made new song with “Speak Your Mind” as its theme. With this theme the musicians will explore what freedom (of speech) means to them. These songs are now available on soundcloud.com/stage-europe-network
The bands that have participated in the Dutch program are: C4030 (Poland), Samaris (Iceland), Fexet and Roufaida & Pluck (The Netherlands), The Strange (France), Memetics (Norway) and Zenith (Latvia).
The participants also volunteered for one day. Volunteering is an important topic in Europe this year. But further more volunteering is also essential within the Dutch cultural field! Without volunteers many festivals, concerts and radio stations cannot exist. The participants of this exchange understood how important volunteers are and also found out that it can be a lot of fun to volunteer!
Besides writing new songs, recording, performing, volunteering, they also made t-shirts & buttons, showed each other songs of their country about freedom and made cover songs of each other. The week ended with a lovely evening boat trip in Rotterdam. The new mixed bands presented their new songs on the boat to each other and family and friends!
The Popunie is the Dutch partner in the Stage Europe Network. The exchange is sponsored by the Youth In Action program from the European Union, where working with and learning about young people from different cultures is of great importance.