[size=55:1ymmajjr]Sofia echo 04 September 2010

My darling Sofia



What sound would best sum up Sofia? That in itself is a big question. The screeching of car tyres at chaotic crossroads throughout the city? The plaintive barking of street dogs on a cold night? The engine packing out on the prehistoric number 76 bus?

I jest a bit, although if you could set these sounds to music you may just come up with a winning entry for the British Council's OPENCities Sofia soundtrack competition.

OPENCities is a wide-ranging project in 10 cities – Sofia, Belfast, Dublin, Vienna, Madrid, Bilbao, Cardiff, Duesseldorf, Poznan (Poland) and Nitra (Slovakia) – aiming to demonstrate that emigration enriches the host city – provided new arrivals are properly managed.

A collaboration between the British Council, the European Commission and various urban municipalities, OPENcities aims to help cities unlock the potential presented by international population flows.

The soundtrack competition is just part of the OPENCities project, so if a haunting melody strikes you while walking down Vitosha Boulevard, now is the time to start composing your entry.

Movement is 'inevitable'

OPENcities starts from the proposition that we are all global citizens. Xenophobes are simply out of tune with the march of history. People are becoming more mobile, the world is getting smaller and more accessible, aided by the breakdown of borders, the increasing frequency of low budget airlines, the global village concept of doing business and – simply – consumers' greater purchasing power.

Governments realise that if they want to attract the best employees they need to open borders. And the more "
open"
the metropolis, the more successful it tends to be, business-wise at least. Thriving cities such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Jerusalem, New York, San Francisco and London now have 25 per cent or more foreign-born residents.

The British Council quotes Italian foreign minister – and former European Commission vice president - Franco Frattini, who referred to the "
inevitability"
of population movement. "
We should not consider immigration to be a threat but rather an enrichment and an inevitable part of modern life,"
he said.

According to the British Council, which has introduced its OPENCities project in many large cities, Dublin is a role model in how to assimilate incoming migrants. The capital of the "
Celtic Tiger"
– although admittedly chastened by the recent recession – used to be quite a homogeneous city but now is noted for its harmony and diversity. But it is not merely a question of giving people more personal choices by allowing free movement of labour. Neither is it just about making city life more entertaining and more culturally diverse. According to the British Council, migration also makes senses economically. By 2050 it has been estimated that a third of the EU population will be older than 65, requiring millions of extra foreign workers to keep economies flourishing. In such a world, it's not a question of IF people move around, but rather how to accommodate them when they do.

The OPENCities programme aims to research the status, needs and potential of incoming migrants, so enabling municipalities to make sound decisions. For example, what kind of amenities or accommodation would migrants expect? How can a city best deal with cultural and linguistic diversity?

Images of migrants

One of OPENCities' biggest new projects is an exciting new photographic exhibition, opening on September 17 in The Mall (Tsarigradsko Chaussee Blvd 115) featuring portraits of emigrants in Sofia, along with photos of migrants in other cities – Cardiff, Belfast, Bilbao, Vienna, Madrid, Dublin and Duesseldorf. This travelling exhibition has already been very popular when staged in Germany, Wales, Northern Ireland and China, as well as several cities across Spain. Along with the Sofia soundtrack competition, it aims to showcase the diversity of migrants and trigger more debate about possible local initiatives.

Featuring 10 photos of subjects for each city, Sofia's photographs include, among others, former The Sofia Echo journalists Rene Beekman and Magdalena Rahn. The photographer for the Sofia portraits is herself an expatriate – Victoria Knysh. Other subjects, as you will see on September 17, hail from India, Russia, the Netherlands, Georgia and the US. Each person has their own story to tell, in particular what drew them to the city of their choice, whether for a better salary or, simply, the perceived better quality of life. And, as they say, a picture tells a 1000 words...

Among attendees on September 17 will be the British ambassador to Bulgaria, Steve Williams, and Sofia mayor Yordanka Fandukova.

Sound of the city

September 17, the day of the launch of the photography exhibition, coincides with the launch of the Sofia Soundtrack competition. Anybody over 16 can submit a musical entry to the competition, whether Bulgarian or an expatriate, professional or amateur musicians. Any style of music is permitted but the entry must not exceed four minutes and it must be an original piece of work, i.e. specifically recorded for the competition and not already released elsewhere. The British Council envisages that the entries should NOT be "
anthems"
to Sofia as such, but rather compositions paying homage to the Bulgarian capital as an open, modern and diverse city. Applicants must either live or work in Sofia.

Applicants should send their entries in MP3 files format. Deadline for submissions is midnight on October 17. An online submission form, as well as more details, are available on the websites of the British Council and its partner in the competition – BG Radio. Other patrons in the competition are The Mall on Tsarigradsko Chaussee, Colliers real estate, electronics retailer Multirama, Dynacord, online shopping company Humanic, FAMEcards, Metro Media and the Fancy restaurant chain, as well as Capital Light and your very own The Sofia Echo.

Entries will be subject to two different adjudications. The first will be a jury of professional musicians;
its exact composition will be announced on September 17. The other is a popular vote;
anybody can cast their vote online. The jury's winner will receive a 4000 leva shopping voucher from Dynacord. The winner of the popular vote will get a computer from Multirama.

The British Council emphasises that the four-minute composition length should be heeded scrupulously. Nobody should underestimate the task of producing a captivating soundtrack but, for young musicians in particular, the British Council believes it to be a great opportunity to get their music heard by a wider audience. The same competition has already taken place in three other cities to great success. If you want to hear the selected soundtracks of Cardiff, Belfast and Bilbao online, you can do so on the British Council website.

Hopefully, the competition and other initiatives in the OPENCities project should help to foster new ways of retaining migrant populations. The end of the open cities project will see the publication of an index of openness of cities, involving a comparison of different cities using various yardsticks.