You start with an idea. An ensemble. A festival. A choir. And then you bounce it around — friends are enthusiastic, colleagues offer advice, your family (always) believes in you. There is warmth and momentum. But there is also that small, persistent voice: Does the world really need another quartet? Another festival or ensemble?
And yet — we know it does. Because what we need are more tangible, enjoyable creative moments and gatherings in our lives, more music that happens in a room, with other people, that cannot be streamed or scrolled past. We cannot have enough of that.
However, a lot of exciting ideas fail — but not because the music wasn’t extraordinary, or the vision not vivid enough. They fail because of the conditions under which they were meant to emerge and live on.
Funding, grants, institutional frameworks, and other existing structures are not neutral backdrops. They actively determine what becomes possible and shape which ideas survive their first few years, and which quietly disappear.
What we should not do is simply accept these conditions; instead, we should learn to shape them from the get-go. So, don’t ask how this idea can be financed, and start asking how this idea or project can be designed so that it can find its place in a sustainable network - as a piece of a larger puzzle?
This means treating potential partners not as funders to be won over, but as co-creators — thinking, from the very beginning, about what a collaboration might offer them. It means designing formats that are flexible enough to work across different contexts: a pop-up edition here, a mirrored festival there. It also means noticing what is already moving and working in the creative landscape. Because as the following examples (large and small) show, this approach is not new, but they demonstrate that, when pursued with intention and long-term planning, it can make projects significantly more sustainable.
A venue: Wigmore Hall recently announced partnerships with the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the yet-to-be-finished Dunard Centre in Edinburgh (which will be Edinburgh’s first new, purpose-built concert hall in 100 years, and so they are at it at a fantastically early stage!), Glyndebourne, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin — sharing programming, commissions, and artists across institutions in multiple countries.
A festival: Liedstadt Hamburg takes its pop-up festival format on the road, staging editions in Zürich and Munich — the same curatorial identity, new cities, new audiences.
An ensemble and festival: O/Modernt, a Swedish chamber orchestra and festival based in Stockholm, carries its entire programmatic concept abroad. The ensemble is currently in residence at Wigmore Hall in London — bringing its full artistic handwriting into one of the world’s leading chamber music venues. It was also invited for a three-day residency at the Heidelberger Frühling 2026, where it designed five concerts under the title Hausbesetzung — a foreign house, its own concept. Their most ambitious cross-border project, North Around the Baltic Sea, went further still: in partnership with festivals in Finland and Denmark, O/Modernt co-commissioned new works from composers including Erkki-Sven Tüür and Sebastian Fagerlund, which were then performed across ten partner festivals in Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, and the UK - one programme, one network, many countries.
A quartet: The Vogler Quartet has built a parallel model over decades. Since 1993 the ensemble has run its own subscription series at the Konzerthaus Berlin, and since 2000 a second series in Neubrandenburg. Beyond that, it holds artistic direction of the Internationale Kammermusiktage Homburg — and for many years led its own chamber music festival in Sligo, Ireland - the same curatorial voice, multiple homes, across borders.
Each of these projects, orchestras, ensembles, venues etc succeed long-term by embracing flexibility, collaboration, and openness — principles that can be applied to any new initiative. These examples are invitations to think differently about how structures can be built and shared. It means keeping your architecture open, even as your artistic vision remains stringent.
I am working on two projects right now that aim for a similar approach. One is focused on broadening local connections, the other one has international collaborations at its core. One got the idea after realising that their existing concept was not sustainable, the other had it built into their structural DNA right from the beginning.
Start with your vision, but maybe think beyond yourself from the very beginning. Know where you’re going, but design your path (and project) so others can actively walk it with you — not only as funders, donors and friends, but also as partners and co-creators. The most resilient projects I believe are built not in isolation, but in conversation, with structures flexible enough to welcome new voices.