Tallinn Music Week, clever ways to promote culture?
I realise this is a preamble to a music review I wrote for The Quietus but (but) there are some interesting ways Tallinn Music Week promote their event that other cultural events could really learn from. Namely things festival goers pick up on, however subliminally, such as clever staging, and giving the audience the freedom to explore (a pretty rare thing honestly!). Have a browse round their site and read their mission statement. For one it was really nice to see an absence of the "big name game" that festivals indulge in, which I think breeds a certain passivity amongst audiences. Which in the long term will breed boredom. As Helen Sildna (TMW organiser) said at MENT earlier in the year, people in the music business have to think, and act, a lot smarter. There are plenty more things I could talk about, but this has to be one of the smartest events I've been to, on a cultural and business level for ages.