NEST helps professional (mid-career) musicians grow and supports them towards a sustainable career, starting from their personal needs. NEST is sparringpartner, work-place, sounding board, community, source of information and contacts, and a lab within which to experiment, develop and investigate. NEST offers musicians a network and - via our talent boosters - the right support when they need it.
NEST is an initiative by Lobke Aelbrecht, developed in close collaboration with Evelien De Jaeger (now Ha Concerts), as a result of many conversations they have had throughout the years with a whole array of people from the music sector.
Maybe you already know Lobke, maybe you don't. In case you don't, you can find more information about her on this page: about the many jobs and position she has had already in the cultural sector and the other relevant experience she built up. In any case, Lobke is the go-to person to boost your musical career or to help your cultural organisation start up a talent development programme for musicians. This is what drives her, her passion, and after more than ten years in the sector, she has the know-how to boot:
NEST wants to contribute to a healthier eco system. In other words, musicians and young professionals balancing musical entrepreneurship and their own authentic practice, without compromises, with room for experimentation and failure. That is how they create a solid foundation on which to build a sustainable career, without having to reinvent themselves constantly for their audience. The firmer musicians are rooted in their individuality, the easier it is to build a practice around it and to generate an audience for themselves. However, currently we see musicians too often hopping from project to project, from recording plus tour to the next recording plus tour. This way of working is based on what the music industry and its business model looked like before, but nowadays this model is unsustainable for many musicians.
A better situation is where musicians, preferably from the off, trust their own practice, choices and judgement, and are granted the space to develop themselves in an authentic way, free from commercial pressure, with room for risk-taking, to build up their own audience and, consequently, a sustainable career. This idea is what NEST would like to develop - together with the musicians - into an original model that takes up its necessary space in the music scene of today.
NEST would like to offer musicians the space, both virtually and physically, to develop into self-sustainable artists with a wide practice. It provides them with a safe home, a warm nest, a network of musicians and people who help musicians and support them in their needs. NEST is a virtual (and hopefully soon also physical) space where musicians can meet each other, where they are taken care of when they need it, and from where they can venture out on their own and return every time they want to. NEST works under the motto "Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”
Next to developing their authentic artistic practice we also believe that the contact between musicians and promoters is important and should be made easier. NEST wants to make sure that musicians can expand their own network in a sustainable way and that NEST musicians are more visible, despite the fact that most of them are not part of any management or booking roster.
Our music sector hosts a vast volume of knowledge, both business-related and artistic. NEST wants to make this knowledge accessible by putting people in contact with each other, by appealing to our own network and that of NEST's partners. NEST facilitates sharing of good practices between musicians and create a cooperative where musicians can help each other move forward.
We don't mean to encroach on the territory of existing management agencies. They are doing a great job for the bands in their roster, but we observe a whole lot of musicians outside of these rosters who could use support and a peer network. The agencies' rosters are, naturally, limited, which implies that not every musician who deserves support and an entourage can be taken on by them. Moreover, there are a lot of musicians who prefer to take control of their own management, but still need a sounding board every now and then. These are the musicians NEST wants to look out for: we want to offer them a peer pool, a network to be a part of, and hand them the tools to take control over their own career, with the right support when they need it.
