The Community Music Online Conference 2020 offers a series of six free digital gatherings between 31 October and 5 December in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.
The aim of the conference is to encourage better understanding and co-operation between community music educators and practitioners across the Asia Pacific Region. Each gathering will open with a keynote conversation leading into a selection of presentations, workshops and open discussions.
The organiser, the Hong Kong-based Centre for Community Cultural Development (CCCD), has been promoting community music for over a decade to encourage everyone to participate in music. As part of the Asia Pacific Community Music Network (APCMN), it has collaborated with similar groups who came together through the Community Music gatherings at bi-annual ISME (International Society of Music Education) conference.
In 2017, Pete Moser, an English musician, teacher, producer and composer who has worked extensively around the Pacific Rim over 14 years, attended the ISME gathering and offered to host a gathering in Hong Kong. It was supposed to have been held in November 2019 but the riots at the time, and then Covid, prevented it.
Undeterred, Moser and his colleagues at the CCCD found funding from the Hong Kong Arts and Development Council and created a programme of events that cross cultural boundaries and bring communities together over six Saturdays. The proceedings will also be recorded and released on the APCMN Youtube channel and into a book.
Moser, who will be participating from his home in the UK, says the online format will offer the experience to a much wider audience and the organisers have ‘extended it to include two extra days in Mandarin and Cantonese that will highlight work in Taiwan, mainland China and HK itself… There are so many stories and connections to share and so many brilliant thinkers, activists and musicians ready to share their work.’
To register for the event, visit the conference website.
