LEEUWARDEN Embrace Netherlands is participating in Kaunas 2022. The Lithuanian city will be European Capital of Culture next year. Embrace is hosting several workshops in the Baltic state and is advising the organization in setting up a large symposium during the Pazaislis Festival, one of the Kaunas 2022 projects. Philip Curtis, artistic director of Embrace, is the keynote speaker at the conference.
Expertise center Embrace has already started the workshop series this calendar year: musicians and music therapy students from Lithuania are being taught online by Philip Curtis and Simone Zwart-Derks, among others. Students are trained to use music in their care for people with disabilities. “We want to provide a movement in the right direction in Lithuania,” said Philip Curtis. “If you want music to really improve people’s well-being, you have to make sure you get care workers excited.”
The collaboration came about thanks to the help of Leeuwarden-Fryslân Cultural Capital of Europe 2018. Director Margot Hoiting participated on behalf of Embrace in an exchange project (“Tandem”) of LF2018 in the Croatian city of Rijeka. ”Eventually that cooperation produced the contact with Kaunas. And it’s great to see that our program is already catching on.”
