OpenMusE climbs the Rax at the “Bergfest”

After a rocky first half of the project, the Horizon Europe project “OpenMusE” took the “Bergfest” as an opportunity to celebrate the successful completion of the first half of OpenMusE and to pave the (hiking) path for the rest of the project.

The German term “Bergfest” comes from film production, where a celebration is traditionally held at the halfway point of a project. SINUS and OpenMusE partner SYNYO took the term literally and brought the OpenMusE consortium to beautiful Reichenau an der Rax in the Vienna Alps. A total of 25 team members took part in the two-day event with the aim of getting the second half of the project rolling and climbing one or two peaks.

The first day of the seminar was used for joint idea generation and project planning. In several workshops, indicators and next steps for the upcoming field research were developed, communication plans were drawn up and event appearances planned. The first draft of the Open Music Observatory was also presented, which sparked lively discussions. Finally, small groups worked on individual work packages, e.g. on pilot projects such as the Live Music Census, the in-store music project or the ESG assessment tool.

On the second day, after an exceptionally harmonious general assembly, the group went up the mountain – probably the most important part of the event. The team building activity planned by SYNYO took the consortium up the Rax by cable car. From there, OpenMusE reached the summit of the Jakobskogel, which turned out to be much easier than climbing the project summit. As a grand finale, the consortium returned to the Ottohaus to end the afternoon with good Austrian cuisine and a fabulous view.

After the successful mountain celebration, OpenMusE is now a strengthened team and is devoting itself to the “last mile” of the project – the design of the Open Music Observatory and the implementation of the pilot projects.