Music4Change adapted the Living Lab model to create collaborative, real-world learning environments where researchers, students, and music-sector professionals worked together on shared challenges. Based on the ENoLL definition, Living Labs were “user-centred, open innovation ecosystems using systematic co-creation in real-life settings.” Rather than testing products or technologies, our Living Labs focused on cultural, social, and sustainability questions within glocal music and sound practices. Music4Change created spaces where participants could experiment, exchange perspectives, and address complex issues such as inclusion, sustainability, cultural resilience, and the music sector’s green transition.
THE MUSIC4CHANGE LIVING LABS
LIVING LAB METHODOLOGY
Living Labs combine co-creation, experimentation, and real-world engagement, bringing stakeholders together to explore challenges in situated contexts rather than controlled settings. They are particularly effective for addressing “wicked problems”, issues that have no single solution and require negotiation across multiple interests and forms of expertise. Following the ENoLL framework, Music4Change Living Labs were designed to operate through:
- Co-creation: citizens, practitioners, and researchers
working together - Real-life settings: testing ideas in
authentic, everyday environmentsIteration: refining approaches through
feedback and practice - Quadruple helix collaboration: civil society, academia,
public authorities, and industry
This methodology enables shared learning, supports innovation, and helps align research with real-world social, cultural, and environmental challenges.
Living Labs: Lessons Learned
Europe’s music ecologies are complex, diverse, and unevenly supported. Whether addressing local challenges or pan-European issues, such as environmental impact of touring and live music, wellbeing in nightlife, or community histories of music, it became evident that these sectors face layered problems that cannot be solved with one-size-fits-all approaches.
The labs demonstrated how research, education, and professional practice could work together to tackle social and environmental challenges faced by the commercial, independent of grassroots music scenes.
Strengthening music for all stakeholders requires sustained integration of research and education at local, national, and EU levels. Research education must also evolve, embedding and developing Living Lab methodologies so that future practitioners are equipped to co-create knowledge and support the sector’s long- term sustainability.
EMC WORKSHOP (SEPTEMBER 2025)
The workshop examined how research currently interfaces with sector practice and how sustainability may be supported across the European music ecosystem, with a focus on identifying transferable insights, shared needs, and areas for further development beyond the duration of the Music4Change project. Participants represented a broad cross-section of EMC member organisations, including creator alliances, festivals, orchestras, libraries and archives, unions and guilds, and media organisations. The workshop was not intended to produce formal recommendations or consensus positions. Instead, it provided a space to gather perspectives, test assumptions, and highlight common challenges and points of convergence that are relevant across different national and professional contexts.
ORGANISATIONS REPRESENTED AT THE WORKSHOP
European composer and songwriter alliance (ECSA); European folk network (EFN); International association of music centres (IAMIC); International associations of music libraries archives and documentation centres (IAML); International federation of musicians (FIM); Centre for Music Ecosystems (CME); European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO); International Music Council (IMC); IMZ International Music and Media Centre; European Choral Association (ECA); Music4Change (M4C); European Music Council (EMC)
KEY TAKE-AWAYS:
1. Collaboration must be sustained, not project-bound. The workshop reinforced the need to connect research, education, and sector practice more closely, and to treat this work as an ongoing process rather than a finite project. Participants expressed a strong appetite for collaboration structures that endure beyond individual initiatives.
2. Early-stage co-design is essential for relevance and impact. Participants highlighted the importance of being involved from the outset of research processes. Late-stage consultation limits relevance and uptake, while early co-design strengthens trust, applicability, and long-term value for both research and the music sector.
3. Shared infrastructures are a critical missing link. Discussions pointed to persistent gaps in shared data, mapping, and knowledge infrastructures. Without common frameworks for evidence-building and exchange, learning remains fragmented and difficult to scale across the European music ecosystem.
4. Sustainability requires integrated, practice-grounded frameworks. Sustainability was understood as encompassing environmental, social, and sectoral dimensions. Participants emphasised the need for approaches grounded in lived practice, capable of addressing access, participation, and long-term viability alongside environmental responsibility.
5. Professional precarity undermines sector resilience. Precarious working conditions in music careers were identified as a major structural challenge. Musicians and other music professionals face insecure employment, unpredictable income streams, opaque remuneration, especially in digital and platform-based contexts, and systemic barriers to collective bargaining for self-employed artists. These conditions not only threaten individual livelihoods but also weaken the sector’s ability to invest in innovation, engage with research, and plan for long-term development. Addressing musician precarity was seen as essential for the future sustainability and resilience of the European music ecosystem.
THESSALONIKI LIVING LAB (2025): SOUND, HISTORIES & URBAN ECOLOGIES
The Thessaloniki Living Lab combined interdisciplinary artistic experimentation with urban music historiography to explore how sound, place, and community shape musical life in the city. Activities included graphic-score experimentation (Soundsketcher), a prototype audio-to-visual tool, walking tours of DIY studios, participatory archiving, and discussions on gentrification, social sustainability, and artistic citizenship.
TAKE-AWAY:
Thessaloniki Living Lab demonstrated how artistic and urban research methods can uncover the richness of local music ecologies, as well as the pressures they face from tourism-driven development and shifting urban priorities. The Living Lab highlighted how creativity and participation are negotiated amid competing interests, and how community-based practices offer vital strategies for sustaining cultural life in changing cities.
GRONINGEN LIVING LAB (NOVEMBER 2024): SUSTAINABLE MUSIC FESTIVALS AND CLUBS
Festival and club professionals examined environmental, social, and economic sustainability in nightlife and festivals, sharing emerging practices and sector challenges.
TAKE-AWAY:
The green transition in the live music sector is complex and challenging, but practical initiatives were emerging. Progress depended on shared standards, long-term commitment, and stronger cooperation. Promising approaches around inclusion and mental health could be adapted across Europe, underscoring the need for ongoing research locally, nationally, and EU-wide.
BERGEN LIVING LAB (JUNE 2023): MAPPING LOCAL MUSIC ECOLOGIES
A collaborative mapping exercise involving 11 local music organisations and researchers from Bergen, explored how Bergen’s diverse music scene approaches inclusion, environmental sustainability, and questions of shared cultural identity. The workshop also examined how organisations and researchers understand their roles within the wider ecology, and where opportunities, or tensions, emerge around collaboration and sector development.
TAKE-AWAY:
The mapping process helped illuminate the diverse infrastructures and working practices that shape Bergen’s music ecology, showing how organisations approach inclusion and sustainability in different ways. It also highlighted areas where closer alignment between the music sector, education, and research could strengthen shared understanding and collaborative capacity.
