
Stepping Stone is an international collaboration platform and community aimed at empowering musicians towards sustainable international careers.

Stepping Stone is an international collaboration platform and community aimed at empowering musicians towards sustainable international careers.
In these times we see a growing need for bottom-up change and co-creation initiatives around the globe. We have become more aware of our own possibilities as well as our connectedness and collective wisdom and power. Besides, music needs to regain and reclaim its value in human civilization. Musicians and supporting organisations are challenged to step up to contribute and collaborate in new ways.
The purpose of Stepping Stone is to support and stimulate these new ways of collaborating and creating that will emerge, by connecting people and offering a common ground, an inspiring community and practical stepping stones for its realisation. Stepping Stone is a collaboration platform and community aimed at empowering musicians towards sustainable international careers. Different projects and methodologies can find a home on the common ground of Stepping Stone, leaving ownership and initiative entirely with the initiators.
Participants are musicians and music professionals, who are open to new ways of collaborating in the world of music: bottom-up, open-minded, committed to contribute and share, appreciative and supportive, playful and responsible, sustainable.
Join the family!
Unfamiliar to working with Slack? You can join by sharing your name, organisation/artist name, and your function. Feel free to leave us a comment why Stepping Stone appeals to you, and what you see as its potential for you?
Mathilde Löffler
jazz journalist
Phil Meadows
saxophonist, composer, connductor Phil Meadows
artistic director Engines Orchestra
managing director Musicians’ Movement
educator National Youth Jazz Orchestra, University of Kent, Phil Meadows’ Online Jazz Schoo
Wesley Stephenson
programmer Jazz North East
festival producer Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music
Berlinde Deman
creator Berlinde Deman
Hilde Spille
partner and booking agent at Paperclip Agency
talent buyer at Conincx Pop Festival
founder and mental coach for musicians at Compass for Creatives
Frank van der Kooij
programmer Sound of Europe festival
Krzysztof Kobylinski
creator Krzysztof Kobylinski
director Palmjazz Fest
director Jazovia Cultural Centre
Sign up for Stepping Stone
Leave your details in the form below, and we will shortly add you to the list of signatories. Feel free to use the name and logo of Stepping Stone to express that you are part of this community. download
BASIC PRINCIPLES
If you embrace the Stepping Stone principles, either in your own practice or with a project or initiative you are involved in, and want to find a common ground in Stepping Stone, please get in touch. Being part of Stepping Stone does not entail having to tick certain boxes or meet formal requirements. It is a statement that says “I (want to) work like this too, in my own way, and share my knowledge and experiences with others.”
Bottom-up
It all starts with a musician or music professional who has a desire to create something and who takes ownership for this. Bottom-up change can occur when people are connected to others and find common ground and inspiration to collaborate and co-create.
Sustainable
Everything that is meaningful in our lives comes from longer-term commitment and friendship. We aim at long-term connections and personal contacts, especially also for the creators, and not only above their heads.
Responsible
Nobody can change you but yourself; you create your own future by taking responsibility for your own personal development and the world around you. We wish to inspire this responsibility and action-taking in ourselves and each other.
Committed to contribute and share
We contribute and share our knowledge and experience and get different perspectives and insights in return. This opens up space for creativity and collective power to emerge. ‘Alone we go faster, together we go further.’
Other values we hold in high regard, are open-mindedness (we are open to new ideas and possibilities, we are willing to let go of old beliefs that no longer serve us or keep us from seeing anew and we embrace the unknown), appreciative (we open our hearts and appreciate what is, without judging whether it is good or bad, as this opens up new possibilities that are ready to emerge and provides the positive energy to make this happen), supportive (as social beings we love to take care of each other. Giving makes us happy and our lives more meaningful; we embrace this as a powerful basis of our community), and playful (life should not be hard. It is in our nature to be happy and light-hearted, which is also the essence of what music brings. By bringing playfulness in our way of working we experience pleasure and flow, feel connected and creative).