Songwriters of Kvarken

A project to develop music creation in rural areas and find new collaborations between songwriters in Finland and Sweden.

About the project

Sweden has for many years been an important player in international music export and Höga Kusten has been a contributing factor to this success. This is thanks to Örnsköldsvik having the country's leading songwriter education Musikmakarna and the complex Songwriters Academy of Sweden. However, there are limited opportunities for music creators to develop outside urban environments. This has resulted in young creative music creators leaving the countryside to find inspiration, knowledge, and to make a living from music. With this background, a project is now being launched to benefit music creators in rural areas.

The project Songwriters of Kvarken is a cross-border network that includes the entire Kvarken region. Through this network, it will be easier to gather digitally and thereby participate in lectures, create joint assignments and sessions for both songwriters and talents as well as producers and entrepreneurs.

The first step in this two-step rocket is to create this transregional concept and competence enhancement measures focusing on common resources in the form of activities such as online lectures and songwriting camps.

In step two, the project consortium wants to make a joint, cross-border effort to brand the entire Kvarken region as an important player in music export internationally, aiming for a planned joint competence center for music export.

Ulla Sjöström – Music Makers

”We are proud of our collaboration with Leader Höga Kusten and that they believe in what we do.”

Songwriters camp creates meetings between songwriters and musicians from Sweden and Finland.

The weekend of May 21-23, 2022, there was a Songwriting camp in Örnsköldsvik. 70 songwriters and artists from Sweden and Finland gathered to write songs for the Swedish and Finnish Melodifestivalen. Check out the film to learn more about what this means for creative meetings across borders.