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EARS – Europe-Asia Roundtable Sessions is a platform supporting creative industry collaboration between Europe and Asia. A place for creative professionals from different cultural settings to meet, connect and share ideas. EARS on Helsinki, took place on August 27-30 in YLE Pasila, catered a blend of keynotes, roundtables and networking sessions with topics ranging from virtual reality to Asia’s festival boom. Tailor-made sections are featured for design, music, performing arts, literature, marketing and media.
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EARS Helsinki 2015 / Part 1. Stories continued...
Day 2 of EARS conference, I started my day with cup of coffee and croissant at Yle Pasila studio and then headed to the morning session 'Spotlight on Performing Art Venues'. Anna CY Chan, Head of Artistic Development of West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, Stuba Nikula, Cultural Director of City of Helsinki, Austin Wang, Director of Taipei Performing Arts Center, Lauri Törhönen, Chairman of the Board of Cable Factory and Keizo Maeda, Program director’s board, Promotion & marketing director of Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre introduced art performing venues in their cities from 4 countries. Although I am not involved in performing arts, I have surely seen performing arts before which it was interesting to hear from people who are working in the fields and how performing venues are important to these arts.
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| (From left to right) Keizo Maeda, Anna CY Chan, Austin Wang, Lauri Törhönen, Stuba Nikula and panel moderator/ program director of EARS, Jani Joenniemi discussing performing arts related topics. (Photo taken from EARS Helsinki, by Hemmo Rättyä) |
After lunch and a good hour of exchanging conversation with Sami Arola about games and virtual reality, and also general discussion about Finnish cultures as well together with local dancer/ choreographer, Johanna Nuutinen, the afternoon session went on with me attending 'Creative Cities and Hubs' which Mediapolis was mentioned during the roundtable session! Anssi Komulainen, Chief Partnership Officer of Yle talked about Yle's strategies of creating new creative hubs all over Finland and Tampere's Mediapolis is one of them. I sincerely hope for Mediapolis to have more creative collaborations between students and professionals to fully realise the purpose of this concept of Creative Hubs.
The 2-day conference ended with great surprises which the organiser announced that EARS conference participants are entitled to attend Modern Sky Festival for the weekend! Refreshment were served and Kikagaku Moyo, one of the band featured in Modern Sky Festival Helsinki, performing for the closing ceremony of the conference. I was so happy to have attended the conference and learnt new perspectives about art and cultural scenes in Finland and around Asia, as well as meeting so many talented and professional people working together for better cross cultural collaboration.
Modern Sky Festival Helsinki is organised in co-operation with Helsinki Festival and the Live Music Association ELMU ry, first time for the festival taking place in Europe. It was happening in the never before used venue of the Hietalahti shipyards. Modern Sky Helsinki showcased a mixture of Asian and Nordic artists, food and cultural phenomena with a mixed genre line up including indie rock, pop, electro and alternative acts, as well fresh new DJ’s from asian and nordic countries.
The 2-day conference ended with great surprises which the organiser announced that EARS conference participants are entitled to attend Modern Sky Festival for the weekend! Refreshment were served and Kikagaku Moyo, one of the band featured in Modern Sky Festival Helsinki, performing for the closing ceremony of the conference. I was so happy to have attended the conference and learnt new perspectives about art and cultural scenes in Finland and around Asia, as well as meeting so many talented and professional people working together for better cross cultural collaboration.
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| Kikagaku Moyo performing at the closing ceremony. |
Modern Sky Festival Helsinki is organised in co-operation with Helsinki Festival and the Live Music Association ELMU ry, first time for the festival taking place in Europe. It was happening in the never before used venue of the Hietalahti shipyards. Modern Sky Helsinki showcased a mixture of Asian and Nordic artists, food and cultural phenomena with a mixed genre line up including indie rock, pop, electro and alternative acts, as well fresh new DJ’s from asian and nordic countries.
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| Top Chinese Indie band, Nova Heart performing at Modern Sky Festival, Helsinki. |
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| Bass Sekolah from Malaysia playing electronic music at one of the festival stage in Nosturi. The band that is from my home country! |
It was really awesome two days participated in the EARS conference and ended in Modern Sky festival listening and discovering great music from Nordic and Asian countries. Definitely a very cultural weekend for me immersing myself in arts, music and people!
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| Listening and dancing to Drippin, DJ from Norway. |
Read EARS Helsinki 2015 / Part 1 here.
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Check out the conference in video reported by gbtimes.
Curious about what happened in the conference? Look at the pictures captured on the 4-day EARS conference.
Tampere University of Applied Science