The Creative Europe culture cooperation project, “West-Balkan and Europe united, musical synergies for young artists” (abbreviated to WeBEUnited), is a collaboration between the European Music Festival for Young People (Pelt – Belgium, EMJ), the Európa Jövóje Egyesület (Kecskemét – Hungary, EJE), Associazione musicale, Harmonia Gentium (Lecco - Italy, GZ) and Stowarzyszenie Przyjaciol Choru Kameralnego Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewieza (Poznan - Poland, UC). The EMJ is the project leader.

With the support of the European Community, WeBEUnited aims at achieving an exchange of culture between EU candidate states and current EU members. More specifically, we will try to achieve this goal by introducing West-Balkan music in the EU and vice versa. For this project, new music will be composed by compers in the Balkan states and the partners countries. These EU candidate countries are Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo.

Including all new countries in just one festival would not be realistic, therefore the project has been spread over 6 festivals, from 1/9/2019 to 30/9/2021, at these festival music from the EU candidate countries and the EU countires will be performed. WeBEUnited lasts for 24 months giving the EU participants a vocal (2020) and instrumental (2021) EMJ festival edition, an EJE festival in 2020 and 2021, a GZ festival in 2020 and a UC festival in 2021.

At the end of the project, we hope to have contributed in dissemintating culture from the West-Balkan and the transformation of the EU candidate countries into full EU members who will have found their way into the European creative and cultural sector. As such we expect to find them among the regular participants after this project’s end date – having achieved our goal of helping these countries getting more involved in the European community.

EMJ

Within the WeBEUnited project, EMJ is the leader and responsible for managing the EU cooperation to a fruitful project. Since 1952, EMJ has organised 67 festival editions, welcoming 5.520 youth choirs and ensembles, over 200.000 EU young artists and roughly 1.200 professionals from over 25 countries. EMJ is successful in creating a fraternizing atmosphere between young and old, professionals and amateurs, participants and visitors, a valuable part of EMJ's task of their EU inclusion.

GZ

Harmonia Gentium aims to help in creating and growing a qualified musical culture for all the population, with no discriminations and free of charge and to create opportunities for useful exchanges of experiences and co-operation within European and Worldwide, realizing the Harmonia Gentium´s pledge, in promoting through the musical art, the friendship between peoples. And more specifically to pay special attention to the young people, with the European Festival G. Zelioli for "Youth Cantores". The youth would make possible a best future by being involved, without barriers, in an atmosphere of peace and fraternity, mutually linked in the common love for music.

EJE

EJE has a history of over 175 settlements (exchanges), 16.000 EU youngsters from over 20 countries all of which makes EJE most appropriate to create an unbounded fraternizing atmosphere and to have their experience and knowledge shared. EJE focusses on workshops, educational, cultural and interactive programs, exchange programs, non-formal learning programs and discussions, guided by professional artists, teachers and cultural experts, all with the aim of helping EU youngsters towards a professional creative and social career. EJE succeeds in creating an unbounded fraternizing atmosphere between young and old, professionals and amateurs, participants and visitors, resulting in an expansion of EJE's opportunities for social inclusion.

Pelt, December 4, 2019

As project leader, EMJ organised a Skype Meeting with all the partners in the project to discuss what everyone is doing for the project at the moment and what the next steps will be. It was a succesful meeting and it was nice seeing everyone again, even though it was through a webcam.