Grants/Outreach event for Iranian Musicians and songwriters to promote understanding and adaption of CC's tools, licenses and technologies.
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
Bar-Ax Promotions, which promotes Iranian musicians and songwriters worldwide, aims to organise, an outreach event in one the Middle-Eastern countries, where Iranian, Turk and Arab musicians and songwriters can attend, to promote understanding and adaption of CC's tools and licenses in their work. The project aim is to introduce CC licenses to new Artistic communities in the Middle-East region.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
The project results in several outputs. The central output is the event itself but also video clips, photos and a written article contribute to a broader outreach of this event. In addition, our excellent contacts within the media should result in several press coverages about the event. For example BBC Persian is interested to cover this event and Al Jazeera will be invited to this event too.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
Bar-Ax targets young Iranian musicians, both men and women, on their path to professionalize their talent, as well as helping to promote, license and share their music globally.br />
Bar-Ax represents more than 75 music bands. We are providing musicians with services including copyright and legal consultancy, PR and marketing. Most recent ventures include an alternative Iranian Arts Festival in March 2010. Another success has been a compilation CD of 14 underground bands in collaboration with Songlines magazine. Bar-Ax is a dynamic and very promising initiative that plays an important role in supporting and promoting the Iranian music community under difficult circumstances.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
The success of the project will be measured by two indicators: participants adapting the licenses in their work, and participants introducing CC in their video interviews, in under other Persian Language.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
There are several organisations involved in this Project. Bar-Ax is initiating this project and has invited the partners organization Zirzemin- an online music magazine- to cooperate with this project. We expect to have more around 100 participants from several ME countries including local artist's communities in Turkey in Syria or in Lebanon. The initiators of this proposal will sustain the involvement of the artists by representing them in other fields-as are provided within Bar-ax- including PR, facilitating performances and distributing their music.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
The overall impact of the project is to increase confidence among Iranian musicians to participate in the global market without the fear of encountering copyright issues. In addition, the project's impact is to make this artists self-sustainable by educating about CC tools, sharing the know how and developing on networks at both the international level and local level which in turn impacts the collaboration across communities .
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
The event should result in at least one video produced by the organizers to reach a wide audience introducing the CC's work, through the words of participants themselves. But also in Press coverage by at least one TV representative. The initiating organization, Bar-Ax, has already a number of tools available for production, including a camcorder. Other tools relevant to magnify the impact are all related to production and sound quality, including 5 Sony voice recorders, an extra camcorder, two camcorder tripod and two suitable microphones. The asset that Bar-Ax will bring in to this project consists of a camcorders and the technical skills to film.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
We can expect to face two challenges: firstly that the artists/musicians do not find Creative Commons licenses (CC) suitable for commercial work. Therefore, the workshop program should include how working with CC can contribute to commercially viable results. Secondly, the language could cause a barrier for some artists to participate in an active way. To bridge the possible language barrier, Bar-Ax will invite interpreters and translators from its network to participate in the event.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
Bar-Ax has a number of sources of funding annually to promote and to sustain Iranian music community. Other sources of funding include, British Arts Council and private donors. To increase the number of participants in this important event to introduce CC to a new Middel-Eastern artistic community Bar-Ax aim is to add other donors and sponsors to contribute. Please refer to the attached budget for other sources of funding.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
The music and artistic community in Iran is currently totally unfamiliar with Creative Commons work. The impact of this project to introduce CC licenses to a wider community in the Middle East can be tracked via the number of CC licenses adopted through the Bar-Ax website and the Zirzemin website. Both organizations are mainly active in the Iranian Artistic community.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
For the project to be realized a funding of $10.000 is required from Creative Commons to convene this outreach event. Additional support from other sources of funding will ensure the success of this project.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Both organizations have several communication channels with the artists they represent, including mailing lists, blogs, newsletters and through pages on the social networking sites.
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