Photo Credit: Brice Robert & Laurie Diaz
Influencers Waging the Battle of European Narratives
Should the European institutions work more with influencers? What tools can influencers use to address the continent’s young citizens? And, more generally, what role can digital platforms play in the battle of European narratives?
Cafés and Alternative Cultural Spaces
Should we add the new generation of social spaces, reimagined creative places, reinvented economic models and alternative entities, to the traditional pre-existing cafés that contributed to Europe’s modernity?
Decolonizing Electronic Music
Developed for the most part in Europe, North America and Japan, the tools and software used to produce electronic music continue to play a central role in the construction of Western-dominated narratives and imaginaries — even though the popular electronic music that came out of the United States in the 1970s and 1980s was predominantly the work of African-American artists.
Music as a Way to Tackle Climate Challenges
Despite warnings in the mass media and a global increase in the awareness of the climate emergency, as well as widespread images of melting ice, rising waters and deforestation, we are still firmly stuck in the status quo when it comes to the environment.
What can be done to bring about change and to successfully communicate the gravity of the imminent disaster? And what if music, through its narrative power and ability to inspire, could provide the answer?
Media Freedom and Pluralism: A Cultural Cause
Fake news, manipulative algorithms, the establishment of vast government-controlled press groups and the suffocation of the independent media: the freedom to inform and pluralism of the media are being challenged all over Europe.
However, for the first time, the news media sector is set to receive support in the form of various measures under the cross-sectoral component of the Creative Europe programme, with a view to promoting media literacy, pluralism and media freedom.
Giving A Platform To New Voices
In June 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, a significant section of the music industry became aware of a major inequality within their scene : that of the under-representation of black artists.
To this can be added the sexist discrimination experienced by many female artists and denounced by women in the sector, who are challenging the very foundations of the dominant musical discourse.
As a result, activists in different communities and from all walks of life are getting involved in initiatives to encourage the emergence of new voices on the scene. These figures are at the heart of the creation of new narratives.
Afropean Stories: An Alternative History of Europe
Adventures in Afropea was an early-1990s album by Zap Mama that introduced the world to the term “Afropean”. Although its use was initially confined to artistic circles as a means to designate African influence on European culture, nowadays it is used to refer more broadly to the generations of black men and women who have made the European continent their home.
Musical Narratives : Hybridization & Experimentation
At a time of increased interaction between the worlds of video game sand music, when artists are increasingly having to innovate to reach new communities and when the arts scene is becoming ever more oriented towards hybridization, what place do these new formats occupy in today’s music industry?
About European Lab
In 2011, Arty Farty launched the European Lab project with the support of the European Union. The ambition of this new platform is to bring together, at the European level, a new generation of emerging and innovative cultural actors, around a shared reflection on and commitment to the future of culture.