European Voices Association founded
by Vocal Blog founder and EVA Chairman of the Board, Florian Städtler
I only realized after the eventual legal registration on December 20th 2011, how long the EVA idea had been cooking. Since the idea of a European vocal music network emerged, a self-appointed “core team” of seven people worked on this project. To give you an impression how this all came about and to motivate you to get involved, here’s the EVA story as a glimpse of the bigger picture.
April 2009
Holger Wittgen, promoter of The Vocal Jazz Summit, Mainz, asks Florian Städtler to plan and set up a live meeting place at the festival’s main venue. To promote this, Florian founds Vocal Blog as a web 2.0 communication platform and a live market place.
October 2009
At the Vocal Jazz Summit, two panels are being held, which discuss the state of affairs of the European and German a cappella scenes. Participants: Volker Bauer, Peder Karlsson, Tobias Hug, Tilo Beckmann, Peter Martin Jacob and Florian Städtler. The idea of a pan-European vocal music network is born.
Polyglot midnight snacks at Tobi's kicked off this session
January 2010
During the premiere of the London A Cappella Festival, Peder, Tobi and Florian work for one full day at Tobi’s Hackney flat, discussing the basic topics of the planned organisation. This dicussion is being followed up by Florian, Tilo and Peter at the Kulturbörse Freiburg two weeks later.
February & April 2010
Workshop meetings in Mannheim and Frankfurt. The team decides to define the purposes and goals of The European Voices Association in an online document that can be signed by supporters: The European Voices Manifesto. A systematic research of existing a cappella infrastructure and “people, who get things done” is being started.
A happy EVA core team after a great meeting in Ludwigshafen
September 2010
Team meeting in Ludwigshafen. Jim Daus Hjernoe joins the core team. The results of the research are impressive, even though many European countries not being researched yet. The details of the Manifesto as well as the three main areas of activities (Volker’s “three bubbles”, doc can be found in this workspace) are being defined.
December 2010
The European Voices Manifesto, signed by approximately 60 movers and shakers from all over Europe goes online at the preliminary website www.europeanvoices.net.
May 2011
At Aarhus Vocal Festival, 60+ vocal music activists gather on Monday morning, 9am (after the final festival party night…) to learn more about what this EVA thing is all about. The model of a preliminary executive board (PEB: Volker, Peter, Florian) and an advisory board that gives feedback to guide the
The Aarhus kick-off meeting participants
trio above is established. The PEB is assigned to prepare the legal foundation of the association including the articles and the foundation meeting.
December 2011
Volker, Peter, Peder, Florian, Céline Morel (jumping in for Tobi, who forgot about this little trip to Japan ), Tilo and Jim have signed the founding documents and the PEB registers EVA as a German “Verein” on the 20th of December 2011. The seven founding members had previously elected Florian as chairman of the board, Peter as deputy chairman and Volker as treasurer.
The deed is done - EVA founded!
So that’s what happened since Holger Wittgen asked me to set up some sofas, a coffee machine and WiFi to host Vocal Jazz Summit guests – isn’t it wonderful? I’m so much looking forward to your feedback, your ideas and inspiration to build something unique and very inspiring. Thanks to the fabulous core team for all your time and dedication – sorry to say that the real work has just begun!
Currently, interested and interesting people have been invited to become members of the Advisory Board, we expect to get a lot of input, which will be included in the EVA roadmap 2012 (Feb 15th). If you want to be involved in the pioneering phase of EVA’s development, feel free to get in touch with me via info@vocal-blog.net – we love to get your feedback, too.
Best wishes and Happy New Year – let’s make 2012 an EVA year!
FSt
Florian Städtler
EVA chairman
www.europeanvoices.net
P.S. Like EVA on Facebook!
Last comments