Discrimination against refugees in the current political European climate is still noticeably widespread – tensions are at their highest and have resulted in an unfortunate rhetoric regarding the view of refugees and immigrants heading towards European countries.

Art provides an unexplored platform from which to explore opportunities for social inclusion. Through creative means and the development of interpersonal skills in the arts sectors, the EU-funded project MoSaIC was designed to tackle the difficult integration of migrants and refugees into the normal cultural and social life of the EU. MoSaIC focuses on combating discrimination through a musical expression:

Music transcends particular language barriers, geographical boundaries and cultural differences, while at the same time supporting distinct genres and musical traditions for different countries that should be preserved.

The Creative Europe project MoSaIC – Music for Sound Integration in the Creative Sector – is led by Ensemble AMADEUS (IT) and involves 3 partners from Belgium, Romania and Denmark from October 2018 to December 2021. The project wants to promote international opportunities for musicians with migrant and European backgrounds to improve their musical skills, start collaborations and co-productions across national borders, nationalities and cultural backgrounds. MoSaIC aims to promote the involvement of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the represented EU host countries through musical collaboration at a national and EU level. The overall goal is to engage professional musicians with migrant and European backgrounds into a path of mutual knowledge and co-creation that allows migrants to share their musical traditions and skills with European artists while exploring different musical genres in Europe.

The project stems from the need to facilitate the integration of immigrant groups into social and cultural life, combat discrimination and ignorance about immigrant backgrounds and promote and spread widespread knowledge about the musical heritage of Europe in order to create a common cultural heritage open to diversity.

In 2019, as part of activities for the Creative Europe project MoSaIC, we produced 10 video interviews with the selected female musicians who made up Swinging Europe’s contribution and composite international band, consisting of nationalities from Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Finland, Syria, Kurdistan and Iran. During the 10 interviews, the musicians reflected on what music means to them, as well as how their own sociocultural backgrounds played into this.

Video-producer: Jonas Kjærsgaard