The brief was to communicate the 15 year existence of the Academy. In most cases you would look back into the past and what the academy has done in 15 years. They had all the big shots in the music industry on their famous sofa talking to a small audience of max 40 to 50 people present. All well documented. Very easy task. Put together the best images and create a book out of this.

Discussing this with the creative directors of the RBM academy we have developed a different view on the subject. All turned upside down something else arises. Music is about a future that’s happening right in front of you to listen to and experience, inspiring to make plans and develop a different perspective.

Since the academy has the best relationships with all the heavy weights in the business (as there were Nile Rodgers, Martyn Ware, Erykah Badu, The Underachievers, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Adrian Sherwood) we had them to organize meetings between the younger and the elder artists or two artists working in the same field but obviously have a different approach to their craft to interview each other about their challenges, their experiences in order to create something that is pointing towards what’s coming next, what are the dreams, what they want to achieve to inspire the readers of the book to go and create.
All this required us to send photographers all around the world, create illustrations of the main issue on discussion to create a book of relevance to the music scene by handling every conversation differently questioning the book format or is it just a big big magazine with a hardcover, create film titles for a film by Ralf Schmerberg on the RBMA, curate a photography show in New York City at the RBMA headquarter and do the fitting of the RBM Radio station. The book, the film, the show, the website, the radio station, it all is a mission statement - the future of music.