Music festivals offer a unique opportunity to identify and promote community-driven initiatives while avoiding common policymaking pitfalls.
Summary →
The Global Livingston Institute (GLI) has demonstrated the broad capacity of these events to catalyze change around the world by hosting a series of free concerts in East Africa "centered around culture sharing, public health, and economic development." This paper shares four lessons about the project of advancing public goods through intentional, responsive, and community-based music festivals.
Introduction
Policymakers and practitioners are always looking for creative and innovative ways to meaningfully impact the communities where they work. It was in this spirit that Jamie Van Leeuwen founded the GLI in 2009 following his travels across Uganda and Rwanda through the Livingston Fellowship that he received from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation? In response to what he saw as an under-informed and colonial approach to international development efforts by NGOs in the region, Van Leeuwen sought to genuinely understand the needs of East African communities by applying a simple maxim: Listen. Think. Act.
