stay SOUND & CHECK yourself
stay SOUND & CHECK yourself focuses on the people behind the scenes of the live music and event industry. Organising concerts, festivals and other formats, planning, promoting and designing everything in advance for the magic moments between artists and audience can be both enormously fulfilling and enormously stressful. Industry experts from over eleven European countries from the UK to Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Hungary to Serbia and Northern Macedonia talk in often very personal individual interviews about their experiences with stress and mental health issues, about what they love about their job and what motivates them. From booker or tour manager to PR and social media, initiators of programmes to promote young talent, security experts and festival directors, the interviews reveal different perspectives on a very lively and varied industry, especially as many of our interviewees were or are also club operators, truck drivers, and/or active musicians themselves.
Most of the individual interviews took place in autumn and winter 2019. In order to take into account the very special challenges emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, additional group panels were held in July 2020. In these groups, our interviewees exchange their thoughts and feelings on recent developments and explore risks and opportunities for the creative sector. Thereby, a contemporary historical document has been created somewhat incidentally. The individual and group conversations are framed by a general introduction to stress and mental strain, including suggestions for self-reflection, and by an outlook on concrete suggestions for supportive action by employers, information on professional support as well as a collection of links. The links provided to free further resources on the topic should be particularly helpful for solo freelancers, smaller companies and non-profit venues.
The book (DIN A4 softcover, 284 pages, 18€) can be ordered free of shipping costs directly from the publisher as well as from any bookshop.
We wish to thank YOUROPE - The European Festival Association and Fresenius University of Applied Sciences (Business and Media Faculty) for their financial support of the project!
Release events & media echoes:
International Live Music Conference ILMC March 2021
WILM Episode 2 (part 2 minute 30-60) February 2021
Eurosonic Norderslaag ESNS January 2021
WDR3 Kultur am Mittag January 2021 (Radio feature in German)