WHERE ARE WE NOW?
On the occasion of the tenth birthday of PXL-Music, we released WHERE ARE WE NOW?. With this publication, the organisation wants to size up the condition of its course. In the meantime, more than 10.000 sounds — a story, a melody, a pulse, an anecdote or even an image — have formed an eclectic soundtrack. The guidelines that were drawn at the start are visible today in the work of more than 200 makers. The network resonates. In the professional world one can hear a nice humming feedback.
In this book 30 graduates of PXL-Music give a photographic peek into their professional lives. They are working as musicians, music technicians or music managers in the pop and rock business. Some of them already have years of experience, others are just taking their first steps. But they are all professionals that who cross borders and avoid the beaten path, equipped with the necessary craftmanship to give shape to their own businesses.
What stands out at first sight? We see artistic papers develop into successful music careers, we see graduates being employed in organisations and companies after an excellent internship, we see young people discovering other art disciplines and finding their way in them, we discover travel stories, sometimes started from an international exchange, we see graduates working in our own organisation, we see people starting their own company to support other rising talent, we see obstinate people doing their own thing, we keep seeing budding love.
We see Luc Janssen’s manifesto, our decleration of inten at the start of the course, taking shape. We swore, signed in blood, to give space to our students, to teach them to think and to act out of the box, to excite their curiosity. To be international. To search for experience, to play with moments and possibilities, to work together intensively, to shape a feeling into sound, ambience and pleasure. The cornerstones of PXL got extra barbs.
We see an educational project focusing on the development of an individual artistic personality, a firm autonomy for the student in his own learning process, combined with persistent and motivated coaching. A project in which students are not only pushed to do what they are good at or to make money, but where they can also can be happy.
We see a unique combination of education and the professional field, national and international. A professional field not only casting a critical eye over our operation, goals and contents, but also a field that takes part in this project and feeds it with realism. And vice versa, we see an educational project that dares to question the professional world and injects it with other and new perspectives and challenges.
Thirty stories… it could and should have been 200.
With sincere pride we look at the future.
Have a look at the complete book here (in Dutch):