Westway LAB is a boutique showcase festival and music conference with a focus on artist residencies, co-creation, and building the knowledge and capacity of artists and music professionals over 4 days of networking in Portugal’s first capital city, the creative city of Guimarães.
Aimed at all 3 sub-sectors of the industry (live music, recorded music, music publishing), for its 10th anniversary in 2023 it will celebrate its focus on co-creation and the “Avant-Trad” innovative approaches to re-inventing folk music. It will also launch a new, forward-facing focus on film and the audiovisual sector.
Its PRO conferences will feature over 30 panel sessions and 3 keynote divided among three conference tracks: Westway LAB, WHY Portugal Event and the Sound & Image Conference Track. There will also be a Europe in Synch Academy workshop run by the EU-funded Cooperation project Europe in Synch, as well as EU project presentations from BELEM, Musika Peripherika as well as the Musicaire “Digital Path to Market” Final Presentation.
This year’s keynotes include Almudena Heredero, Director of Primavera Sound, Kees van Weijen (IMPALA ex-President and Chairman and President of the Independent Trade Association STOMP in the Netherlands), and Rodrigo Areias, film director and producer from BANDO à PARTE. Other confirmed speakers include ITB’s Steve Zapp, Music Finland’s Turo Pekari, SKY’s Peter Bradbury, Virar Csiszar from Sziget Festival and many more.
Artist-wise, Westway LAB continues its export mission on behalf of Portuguese music, showcasing Portuguese Artists on the Antena 3 and WHY Portugal Stages as well as welcoming Basque artists via a special protocol between WHY Portugal and Basque Music. Other Spanish, as well as international artists, also participate in both the showcase concerts, headline concerts and artist residencies. Some names include: Nacho Vegas (ES), Criatura (PT), Ezpalak (ES), La Furia (ES), Yann Cleary (FR), B Fachada (PT), Ana Lua Caiano (PT), Linda Martini (PT), Rita Vian (PT) and others.
The full line-up of the conference and festival programmes are now online at www.westwaylab.com
