Music Friendly Communities Launch Virtual Roundtable Discussions
Over the past two weeks, the Texas Music Office (TMO) Music Friendly Community Liaisons have been brought together over a series of virtual round table discussions. The idea for this stemmed from the TMO’s Texas Sounds and Cities Conference this past September, where a significant part of the day was spent in breakout sessions. The ideas that flowed from those breakouts truly showed how important it is for our cities to have platforms for communication, sharing ideas and learning from both their successes and mistakes. To keep this momentum moving forward, the virtual round tables were created and kicked off earlier this month.
All 30 of our certified Music Friendly Communities were invited to participate in these virtual round tables. Participation is a key component to our MFC program, and nearly all of our cities were able to join one of the discussions. While each meeting had a bit of housekeeping to tend to - running through the Liaison reporting system, discussing the upcoming Texas Music Industry Directory updates and a few other odds and ends - the bulk of these discussions were topics suggested by the Music Friendly Communities.
This gave the newer communities an opportunity to ask the more established certified cities questions, ranging from how their Advisory Board meetings are structured to what systems they use to house their city-facing music directories. Several themes emerged during the round table discussions, including: best practices for their MFC programs on social media, creating networking opportunities for local music industry, and leading educational workshops to help their musicians and music businesses.
With the success of these initial virtual round tables, the TMO will add more of these into our yearly calendar, including a few with very focused discussion topics as needed. A huge thank you to all of our Music Friendly Community Liaisons for continuing to work hard on behalf of their local music industries. A more connected Texas music industry is a stronger one, and events like these virtual round tables are a great tool for helping bring our cities together.
MUSIC FRIENDLY COMMUNITY DECEMBER 2021 EVENTS:
New Braunfels: Great holiday music in New Braunfels! https://www.playinnewbraunfels.com/winter-holiday-events-in-new-braunfels/ including a December full of Christmas shows at the Brauntex Theater https://brauntex.org/theater-upcoming-events/, the Two Tons of Steel Holiday Show at Gruene Hall https://gruenehall.com/calendar/, and Caroling in the Caverns/Live Music at Natural Bridge Caverns' "Christmas at the Caverns" event: https://naturalbridgecaverns.com/christmas/.
Round Rock: The City of Round Rock Arts and Culture will be giving a lot of attention to music in December with our Hometown Holidays in downtown Round Rock. We wanted to do something a little different in downtown, and this also provides opportunities to so many local musicians too!