“About 15 years ago I read a book that truly inspired me. It was called ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’ by Matt Mason and was an interesting story of ‘piracy’ and the unstoppable train of technological advancements. Fuelled by an ‘Open Source’ approach to previously static cultural and commercial items, it meant that mavericks and disruptors could now see, modify and distribute these ‘items’ as new ‘content’ when they saw fit.
Innovation at this time was spearheading at a rapid rate, enabling creative people to flourish. I was fascinated by this approach – not just in terms of commerce – but the idea of openly sharing information, ideas, insights and experiences to allow others to see, modify and share through their own activities and careers. It felt empowering, especially to underserved communities.
It was the ideology behind this thought process that later inspired the creation of MESH Culture, a blog and magazine I started back in 2008-2009 with a group of friends. It was all about spotlighting cultural leaders who took, mixed and re-mixed in order to make something really fresh and exciting.
Over the years, I honed this approach and today it is the main driver of my work ethos to that of talent development and talent management. All my programmes are designed with the people ‘who know’ and those ‘who do’ in mind and at the forefront – meaning they selflessly share as much information as possible from their experience and specialist perspective allowing emerging talent to understand ‘how’ they have done it so they can apply that knowledge to what they do and activate it within their own work.
It was around this time I started further developing an idea with a couple of creative friends. An idea based on a new platform that would spotlight and celebrate creativity as well as inspire more creativity within a community. Applying the ‘Open Source’ philosophy, the platform would encourage the sharing of creative work and ideas within that community with the intention that it could be developed and existing work could be improved on, which would ultimately benefit the community.
Fast forward to the present day and that idea is now coming to fruition. Over the past several years I have had the privilege of curating and managing an amazing talent development programme called LIMF Academy. Working with 16-25 year old’s, this award-winning programme aims to help musicians grow their talent through activities, networks and insider know-how from the music industry. Taking the latter point, this is how ‘Open Sauce‘ came to be.
‘Open Sauce‘ uses the ideology of ‘Open Source’ but with a little more ‘flavour’ and is all about ‘cool’… ‘sharing the sauce…’ ‘…they’ve got sauce…’ …you get the idea. Anyway, I’m proud of the fact that the first ‘Open Sauce‘ music conference takes place on Saturday 28 January covering subjects such as artistic liberation and execution, independence, funding, utilising data, Web 3.0, networking and mental well-being amongst others.
Some of the best minds and organisations in the business will be there to share their insights and connect with the attendees in an impactful way. Speakers include Sarah Stennett (CEO, First Access Entertainment), Rob Swerdlow (Director, Starwood Management), Achal Dhillon (Music Federation & Killing Moon), Bryan Johnson (Head of Artist & Industry Partnerships International, Spotify), Låpsley, Red Rum Club, Fuzz Chaudhrey (Producer, BBC Music Introducing), Despa Robinson (Founder and CEO, BE83 Music Group) plus many more. The day will also feature a series of intimate in conversations, discussions and drop in sessions.
So that all remains for me to say is, if you are an emerging music creator or industry professional this is open for you. Please come to be inspired, inspire, be challenged and challenge. And connect. We will all be better for it.”
Yaw Owusu, Curator, LIMF Academy
