HARK! – Helping Art Reach Kids officially launches across Europe.

A new European initiative has been launched to ensure that every child has access to high-quality live music experiences.

HARK! – Helping Art Reach Kids has one mission: to increase access to high-quality live music for children and young people across Europe while strengthening the professional ecosystem that makes these experiences possible.

In recent years, following the Covid-19 pandemic, communities across Europe and the world have faced greater social, economic and geopolitical instability, which has reduced access and opportunities to participate in cultural life for many children and young people, particularly in rural and from socio-economically vulnerable groups. While digital formats have provided alternatives, they have not been able to fully replace the social, emotional and immersive experience of live performance.

At the same time, cultural professionals in the field of music for young audiences often work in isolation, within fragile and underfunded systems that offer limited opportunities for international collaboration, professional development and long-term sustainability.

HARK! is a unique initiative of JM International’s YAM (Young Audiences Music) network, which  aims to respond to these challenges through a project that brings together artistic development, professional training, youth participation and international collaboration. 

Key components of HARK! include YAM Labs, which aim to connect musicians, producers and organisers of young audiences concerts from across Europe, providing them with professional training in order to improve the artistic and educational quality of their live music productions, and YAM Crews, a school-based programme that empowers youth to take an active role as cultural organisers with the guidance of trained facilitators. Alongside these elements, the project will also include national and international showcases to present young audiences music productions, support networking and encourage international touring.

Across all its activities, HARK! integrates key priorities such as inclusion, gender equality, environmental sustainability and digital accessibility. From sustainable touring models and low-carbon event planning to inclusive programming approaches, these principles are embedded throughout the project, ensuring that innovation extends beyond artistic content to organisational and ecological practices. An outcome of the project will be the development of a shared European digital platform and database to improve visibility, knowledge-sharing and collaboration across the sector.

By investing in people, structures and shared knowledge, the project will ensure that helping art reach kids is not a temporary initiative, but a lasting commitment. Ultimately, the ambition is clear: to make access to high-quality live music an integral and expected part of every child’s life in Europe.

This project has been made possible through the European Union’s Creative Europe platform as a large-scale European cooperation project coordinated by the Cultural Administration of Region Västra Götaland (Sweden), supported by JM International (JMI) and its Young Audiences Music (YAM) Committee,  including 16 organisations from 11 countries, working with live music for young audiences in Europe.

Stay tuned on our www.yamspace.org for updates, stories and upcoming activities across Europe. For more information, please contact us at mail@jmi.net or +32 2 513 97 74.