Our first #MTFSatellite event

The MTF crew went to Genoa, Italy to take part in the Orientamenti education fair and run an #MTFSparks music hack workshop for teens. It was our first #MTFSatellite - where we take parts of the Music Tech Fest and run them as individual modules outside of the main festival event.

Music students chosen from the region created handmade musical instruments, built and performed with jelly theremins and developed new musical technologies using the Arduino / Genuino platform.

Our new team member, Alexander Allen, was himself one of the #MTFSparks teens just a couple of years back. At the time, he impressed us all with a quadcopter he’d built and flew in the London Symphony Orchestra Hall at the Barbican St Lukes during our #MTFLondon event. This time around, he came along as part of the team to document the event - including some fantastic drone footage with breathtaking views of Genoa.

We had some great feedback from the event. When we asked the Secretary General of the Chamber of Commerce, Maurizio Caviglia why music and innovation are important to Genoa, he told us:

Genoa is a city that looks to the future without forgetting thousands of years of its own history. A city where the young make music in Paganini’s name; where the historical Doge’s Palace – the palace of the people’s power in Genoa’s medieval republic - hosts pop art exhibitions; and the Old Port is full of young people building their future. It’s a place where historic shops are revived thanks to new industries and students from all over the world come to do research.

It’s no accident that we have called it #Genovamorethanthis.

Music Tech Fest’s #MTFSparks event put new tools, technologies and techniques into the hands of young Genovese music students with some inspiring results.

Orientamenti organiser and expert for European projects for young people, Stefania Bertini of edure.it wrote:

“Working with the MTF Team for the first time in Italy has been an exciting experience, even for those of us who have dealt with European partnership projects for young people for many years.

“The Italian students took to the #MTFLabs experience with great enthusiasm and became completely immersed in the shared activity. In their subsequent comments on social media, students from the music high schools of the Region called it “fantastic” and “unforgettable”, and expressed wishes to continue the experience in a future instalment.

“It was immediately clear that MTF is the ideal European model to explain to young people what it means to create connections between different disciplines, especially music, digital innovation, creativity and technology.

#MTFSatellite is our way to reach out to new communities in a more agile and modular way. We take components of the Music Tech Fest and introduce the MTF methodology to more people in new places.

Genoa offers a wonderful basis for building an innovation ecosystem around Music and Technology. It’s a place where the history of art and music come together with the future of technologies and creative industries. During our time in Genoa, the MTF team visited the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Casa Paganini, the Camera di Commercio di Genova, the Historic Shops and the Palazzo Ducale.

Huge thanks to Ligurian Regional Councillor of Communication, Training and Politics for Youth and Culture, Ilaria Cavo - the mastermind behind Orientamenti.