popUP NRW

“popUP NRW” offers up-and-coming new bands from all musical genres in North Rhine-Westphalia an all-year-round sponsorship programme with competition elements and individual coaching sessions. By the end of 2011, more than 40 groups had benefited from this first-class support provided by industry professionals and experienced band trainers, as well as from the state-wide event organiser’s network which helped enable groups involved with the scheme to perform numerous gigs in popular NRW clubs and beyond.
From autumn 2012, "popUP NRW" is being redesigned into a prize for promoting young talent. By doing this, “popUP NRW” is integrating into an extensive, state-wide concept for the promotion of pop music. The plan is to create an end-to-end promotional model that includes various actors. As well as the NRW KULTURsekretariat, these actors include the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry for Culture and the NRW State Music Council (Landesmusikrat NRW), plus festivals such as c/o pop, Bochum Total and so on. A finely-tuned variety of workshops, performances, prizes and coaching sessions by professional scouts and trainers will bring together all the various aspects of the business, such as structural, project and artistic promotion, and is also aimed at a wide audience as well as the crème de la crème of state-wide promotion.
The objective is to link local and regional promotional levels more closely with each other, to professionalise interfaces to the music industry and to ensure connections with nationwide and internationally-orientated programmes. As a result, North Rhine-Westphalia – with its excellent pop scene – shall become even more competitive, even in cross-regional contexts.
Within this overall concept, “popUP NRW” will act as a prize for promoting up and coming young bands, offering a prize money of Euro 10,000, which can be awarded in several categories. The prize money is awarded in association with a project, for example for specific marketing measures, the setup or expansion of web / social media activities or the production of audio / video recordings.