The new music and urban culture festival Tallinn Music Week (TMW) has revealed new speakers at the Creative Impact conference, taking place on March 29th and 30th in Tallinn, Estonia. The new additions to the speakers’ lineup include pioneering British designer Malcolm Garrett, unconventional Finnish pop maverick Jimi Tenor, and Keith Siilats, the logistics consultant and pilot for the notorious Fyre Festival.
TMW 2019 Conference + Festival Pass at €225 (from the 19th March €250) and Conference Pass at €125 (from the 19th March €150) are on sale at TMW web shop.
TMW 2019 conference is scheduled to take place at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EAA) on March 29th and 30th at 10:00 – 17:30. The opening of the conference takes place on Friday, March 29th at 9:30.
Scheduled to take place at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EAA) on March 29th and 30th, the TMW conference will focus on the impact of arts on the economy. A special emphasis will be put on the role of arts in urban and regional development, and the artist’s role to provoke and to enlighten, not just mirroring the aesthetic standard of the day but also providing a window into the context of the time and its social issues.
Something of a legend in British graphic design, Malcolm Garrett cut his teeth designing landmark artwork for bands such as Buzzcocks, Magazine, Simple Minds and Duran Duran. He has also become a key figure in the evolution of the sector, developing pioneering work in the digital space, and founding the annual Design Manchester festival, which is committed to ensuring the industry’s voice is heard as the country charts its future outside the European Union. On The New European weekly’s 2018 Christmas issue Malcolm famously declared “Brexit is over! If you want it” (an homage to the iconic “War Is Over! If You Want It” poster by John Lennon and Yoko Ono). TMW sees him in conversation with the fellow Mancunian punk and journalist John Robb about his iconic artworks and the power of social motivation in design.
What does it take to remain an eccentric act beyond current trends? That will be revealed in the artist talk with renowned Finnish musician and composer Jimi Tenor. Saturated with black humour and a romantic tone, Tenor has never settled for the traditional role of a pop artist. His output has been described as the musical equivalent of Andy Warhol for his ability to combine spontaneous silliness and shameless glamour. A master with his own tools, Tenor has built music instruments out of scrap throughout his career, including the noise-producing device the main components of which were from a Walkman and a bicycle dynamo. Jimi Tenor will also supervise the music instruments building workshop entitled ‘Hombla Kjurr’ for the students of the Estonian Academy of Arts (EAA) Interior Architecture Department. The DIY-instruments will be put to use at the special TMW City Stage performance at EAA.
Is running a music festival a glamorous business of planning carefree weekends of “the best in food, art, music and adventure”… or a cutthroat survival game? There’s an oversaturation of festivals all over the world, and dozens have been cancelled just in the last year, whilst some never even get off the ground. Opening up on the panel moderated by TMW founder Helen Sildna is Keith Siilats from the team behind Fyre—the notorious “the greatest festival that never happened”—amongst other festival promoters. Helen herself will also share the trials and tribulations of the TMW festival.
Whilst nightlife metropolises like Berlin and Amsterdam recognise the positive impact of nighttime tourism on the cities economy, then what does it take when the desire to run a nightclub is forced into politically loaded role of an activist? The TMW conference gathers club promoters from the cities with different notions of freedom and regulation, among them Alexander Ionov, the patron saint of Russia’s outsider groups and the art director of the St. Petersburg underground club Ionoteka; Tato Getia, a founding member of Tbilisi’s techno mecca Bassiani; and Elena Natale, the co-founder of HALL, Tallinn’s own “DIY-Berghain” in Port Noblessner.
What are the positive results of architectural rethink? Elsa Hessle, Head of Education at Amos Rex—a newly opened private art museum with unique architecture in Helsinki—will tell the story behind the meeting place for art and urban culture, and the importance of giving new lease of post-modernist life to 20th Century modernist landmarks.
How to provide and support life worth capturing? Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm is a meeting place for all kind of visual culture, examples of how photography can raise awareness on different social and political issues, and much more. The story of Fotografiska, one of Europe’s great photographic successes, will be told by Fredrik Andersson, partner at the Fotografiska Museum for contemporary photography.
The TMW conference will also deal with myth-busting in the music synchronisation market. A reality check on the topic will be provided by established professionals like Connie Farr, music supervisor and creative director of a “one-stop music supervision” company ThinkSync Music. Farr will also be one of the mentors of a practical sync workshop within the conference. In the workshop by Jennifer Masset — Global Head of Independent Label Support at Spotify—artists, managers and songwriters will be presented with an exclusive insight into how Spotify is evolving—from new formats and playlists, to tools artists can use to understand and engage their fans.
Some of the previously announced central figures of the TMW conference are the postpunk polymath Barry Adamson, Zoë Howe, one of the brightest rock writers of the 21st century, artists and film-makers Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, music supervisor Lucy Bright, Gunvor Kronman —who has turned arts into the engine for economy of Helsinki — and the specialist of sensitive artistic design Samuli Woolston.
The ABC of the TMW conference’s music industry programme emerges in cooperation with Music Estonia, and the film music programme in cooperation with the international film and TV production company Tattarrattat.
The full lineup of the TMW 2019 conference speakers and the complete schedule will be published next week.
Confirmed panellists of TMW 2019 conference.
TMW 2019 Conference + Festival Pass at €225 (from the 19th March €250) and conference-only pass at €125 (from the 19th March €150) are on sale at TMW web shop shop.tmw.ee along €65 Festival Pass and €150 Supporter Pass. Additional information.
The deadline for TMW 2019 press accreditation is the 25th of March.
TMW 2019 takes place from 25th to 30th of March, with the two main components of an international new music festival and a conference focusing on the impact of creativity. The TMW City Festival includes an Arts programme, free City Stage concerts, a public discussion series entitled TMW Talks, a kid’s programme, and the Telliskivi design tour.
TMW is presented by Telia Estonia, main supporters Nordic Hotel Forum and Enterprise Estonia, and partners Music Estonia and Estonian Academy of Arts. The festival is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Tallinn Culture Department, and the Estonian Cultural Endowment. The conference venue—The Estonian Academy of Arts—is the only public university offering higher education in arts, architecture and design in Estonia.
Header image: collage from Malcolm Garrett exhibition ‘Buzzcocks – Fizzing at the Terminals’ held at the Design Manchester 2017 festival (photo by Sebastian Matthes) and Malcolm Garrett’s ‘Brexit is Over! If You Want It” cover art for The New European (Dec 2018)