There are music cities dotting the globe – from Toronto to Melbourne to Liverpool. Music Canada has spent the last year researching best practices from 22 of them on how to foster a music city. From musician-friendly practices, to the creation of designated cultural districts, to affordable housing incentives, there are many ways that we can encourage music in the heart of the city. In this series, we’ll be profiling our travels to various music cities worldwide to present our report, The Mastering of a Music City. We’ll also be featuring countless cities around the globe and what they’re doing that’s unique to foster the principles found in our report.

First stop: The Summit – a gathering of leaders from various music cities at the Pemberton Music Festival in British Columbia!

In the Squamish Lil’Wat Cultural Centre, an inspiring museum dedicated to telling the stories of the Squamish and Lil’Wat First Nations, about 200 people gathered to hear presentations by music leaders from Washington, New York City, Los Angeles, Adelaide, Vancouver and Toronto. We delivered our stories in the Japanese Pecha Kucha style: 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide. They were both personal and analytical. I was privileged to provide highlights of The Mastering of a Music City.

Drawn from their personal experience, the presentation by Katrina Jones and Adam Nanji of The Belle Game was a definite highlight. With a clear sense of responsibility, Kat and Adam, chronicled the challenges facing musicians in BC’s largest city – boiling it down to money and space. Finding affordable living space and rehearsal space is a definite challenge for artists.

Vancouver is not alone. In The Mastering of a Music City we contrast the critical importance of creating an environment that attracts and retains artists and musicians who are the heart of a music city, with the tendency for living costs to rise as inner cities become more attractive, often as a result of the level of creativity occurring there. Affordable housing, like that found in Nashville, is a key way to address this challenge. Kat and Adam contrast Vancouver with Montreal and indeed, our report points out that the lower cost of living in Montreal has been a key factor in its ongoing attractiveness for the creative community.

The Future of Music Coalition’s Casey Rae identified affordability as a key concern in the US as well. Rae suggests that cities can find solutions in adaptive reuse – repurposing empty buildings for creative activities without a large arts or infrastructure budget commitment.

Adaptive reuse is the goal behind a project in Marrickville, an area in Sydney, Australia, where the Marrickville/Sydenham Industrial Lands have been identified for development as a creative industries hub. Development proposals will only be considered that plan to use the business and industrial spaces for creative industries.

Daniel Seligman of Pop Montreal provided a very positive overview of his Music City, including describing the city’s alternative spaces that are available for occupation permits – places like the space underneath the city’s bridges that have been used for Bridge Burner parties. Montreal is featured in The Mastering of a Music City for a number of its best practices including the single office at the city that handles special events including music, making navigating City Hall an easy undertaking. Seligman confirms that Montreal is a very music-friendly city.

The balance of presenters shared positive elements of their Music Cities – great spaces and places for performance, favourite haunts of musicians and the industry professionals who support them, memorable moments in the cities’ musical past, and iconic bands and artists who have put their cities on the map.

The only thing left, after a day of sharing inspiring stories and discussing common challenges, was to spend time at one of BC’s terrific music festivals. More than 115,000 people attended the Pemberton Music Festival last weekend – some from nearby in parts of British Columbia while others travelled many miles to get there. The hotels and restaurants in nearby Whistler and Squamish were jammed. It’s a classic story of music tourism. The 2014 festival is estimated to have injected more than $40 million into the BC economy. Not bad. And a beautiful location for a music festival.

Each of these themes appears in The Mastering of a Music City. If you haven’t had a chance to read our full report, you can find it here. Want to share your story of how your organization is helping to foster a music city? Contact us – we’d love to hear from you!