Project title
Description of initiative
Introspection Music Experience (IME) is a 3-year European cooperation project that brings together musicians and composers with and without psychiatric vulnerabilities from Belgium, England, Greece and Spain. During this project, 12 solo artists and bands will collaborate with composers with experience of mental health challenges in order to create music together that will make new audiences aware of real experiences of mental ill health. IME will create a space for diverse communities to get to know each other, initiating a dialogue, sharing experiences, and finally, producing bold and authentic artistic expressions to share with the wider world. The artists will use music as a vehicle to talk about the reality of living with mental ill health from a first hand perspective, and thus contribute to the elimination of the persisting stigma towards mental illness and people living with it.
Themes: Culture and...
Keywords
Target group
Cultural field
Budget
Timeframe
Sources of funding
Results, benefits, impact and lessons learnt
During the 32 months of the project the team evaluated they:
1). Promoted co-production between musicians with and without mental health issues by organizing workshops, sessions, labs, residencies, Jam sessions, etc. between them. These events had allowed both groups to work together, share experiences, knowing and benefit each other;
2). Redefined Music by incorporating new contemporary and non-mainstream experiences by the launch of a singular Album with 14 songs. These songs make mental health issues closer to Music and share from different angles how is to live with mental health issues from the point of view of the person who lives with the symptoms every day;
3). Attracted new audiences among those groups of people who are underrepresented in the Musical sector. During IME Project not only people living with the symptoms of mental health issues had discovered or re-discovered Music, also woman victims of Gender Based Violence or Homeless people had used Music to express themselves and as a way to share their experience, enriching their lives and the Musical sector.
4). Promoted the mobility of emerging artists who participated in the Intro Music Week in Valladolid (Spain) met together and shared their views about the project and the virtual mobility as well, as due to COVID-19 restrictions concerts and final Touring were organized online but in cooperation of all the Musicians involved in the IME Project. who experienced how does it feels to talk to supporting them to make their living out of the Music.