ABOUT THE PROJECT

The InMus: From youth to professionalism: Employability Skills in Music is an Erasmus+ project implemented in Cyprus and Portugal by the consortium partners Sistema Cyprus and Orquestra Geração and aims to offer career guidance and job skills training in the professional field of music to young musicians  who are participating in Sistema- inspired social music projects.

Activities will include:

• training workshops for young musicians
• job shadowing opportunities for young musicians,
• the development of a guide for youth workers in the field of music,
• video tutorials for young musicians and music teachers across Europe and the world.

The project will strengthen the employability of young musicians from marginalised communities, while also developing an attractive education and training programme in line with the individual needs and expectations of young musicians with fewer opportunities.

Project Update: Three Inspiring Training Workshops Completed for InMus

We are excited to share that all three training workshops for young musicians, held in Nicosia, Cyprus as part of the InMus project, have been successfully completed!

These hands-on sessions were designed to equip young musicians—especially those from Sistema-inspired social music programmes—with the skills and knowledge needed to build a career in music. The workshops covered a wide range of essential topics, from performance preparation and branding to financial literacy and digital promotion.

🔹 Workshop Highlights 🔹
Workshop 1: Starting Your Journey as a Professional Musician
Young musicians learned about the many career opportunities in music, how to prepare for performances, select equipment, communicate with venue managers, and present themselves professionally.

Workshop 2: Branding & Financial Literacy
Participants explored the importance of building a personal brand, understanding the value of their work, setting professional fees, and managing budgets to support sustainable careers.

Workshop 3: Social Media & Audio-Visual Promotion
The final session offered practical insights into using social media for visibility, following digital trends, creating engaging content, and producing quality video and audio material for online platforms.

🙏 A Special Thank You to Our Trainers! We are deeply grateful to the professionals who shared their time, expertise, and enthusiasm with our participants: Loukia Lazarou, Encarnita Ioannou, Andreas Georgiou, Andreas Trachonitis, Eleonora Roussou, Antonis Bargilly, Nikolas Papageorgiou, Christina Argyrou, Leda Ayiomamiti, Tatiana Loutsiou and Myria Kkali. Your guidance has had a lasting impact on our young musicians and their journey toward professionalism.

🔜 What’s Next?
The project now enters its next phase: job shadowing opportunities for participants, providing real-world experiences in professional music environments.

Project Update: Job Shadowing Completed for InMus

Music meets professional experience!
We are thrilled to announce the successful completion of the job shadowing phase of the InMus project – From Youth to Professionalism: Employability Skills in Music. 

As part of this exciting phase, 20 young musicians from Sistema Cyprus had the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in real-world music environments, observing and learning directly from talented professionals across various musical settings.

From grand symphonic rehearsals and festivals to jazz bars, recording studios, and energetic live music venues, our participants experienced the diversity of the music profession up close. These shadowing activities not only offered inspiration but also allowed the young musicians to:

• Develop a deeper understanding of career paths in music
• See professional collaboration in action
• Strengthen their motivation and confidence as emerging artists

Step Closer to Professionalism
This experiential learning opportunity is part of the broader InMus initiative, which aims to bridge the gap between music education and employment by equipping young musicians with the tools, knowledge, and networks needed for a sustainable career.

🔜 What’s Next?
The project now enters its next phase: launching a series of video tutorials for musicians and educators. Stay tuned!

Discover the InMus Video Tutorial Series on YouTube!

We’re excited to launch the official InMus Video Tutorial Series on YouTube—your new go-to space for practical guidance and inspiration in building a career in music.

Created as part of the InMus: From Youth to Professionalism – Employability Skills in Music project, this series is designed for young musicians and music educators involved in Sistema-inspired social music programmes across Europe and beyond.

🎯 What to Expect
The video tutorials cover a wide range of essential topics, including:

• Music marketing and personal branding
• Financial planning and setting professional fees
• Social media strategies for musicians
• Audio-visual content creation
• Career development tips and more

Each episode offers accessible, real-world advice to help young musicians take the next steps in their professional journey.

📺 Subscribe and Stay Updated
New episodes will be added regularly, so make sure to subscribe to the InMus YouTube channel to follow the full series as it unfolds.

👉  CLICK HERE FOR CHANNEL

New Resource Available: The InMus Guide on Employability Skills in Music

“I want to sing”

(Y. & Mostafa)

A lullaby is, among other things, a love song. The melodic expression of parental love. A musical vehicle through which emotions travel from parents to children. An original lullaby, as the ones that participants of the Lullaby Project compose for their little ones, is the ultimate form of that expression. Because what is being created in the process is an original lullaby. Inspired by a parent’s personal experience and powered by the special, individual bond, between a specific parent to her or his children.

Such is the case with Y. who, in writing a lullaby for his daughters, he channeled his life story, his shared experience with them, his aspirations for them, and his hopes for a tomorrow filled with light through music, through melodies, and through beautiful imagery. And created their own, original lullaby, a love song to be shared with them and the world.

This is one of the characteristics of the process that Mostafa points out, and possibly one of those attributes of the Lullaby Project that makes it equally enriching for the participant composers: the creative task to “write feelings” and, in this case, to “write somebody else’s feelings”. To be able to connect with the other, to sense their ideas at a deeper level, as to be able to help them transfer those in the musical universe of lullaby writing. In order to do so, one needs to be able to also connect with the ultimate attribute of a lullaby, which is the attribute that provides it with universality: love. 

Love and its driving power create the thread that brings together the parents’ ideas with the composers’ creativity, the finished lullaby with the children, all the lullabies together, and all the lullabies with parents and children around the globe. In this way, love and its driving power dressed with the light of lullabies, become the soundtrack with which we can sing our way to a better world.

Artist collaborating with mother: Mostafa Ismail

Lullaby Supported by: European University  

Follow Sistema Cyprus’ social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram to experience the journey of Lullaby creation.

“Adorable Child”

(Dioh & Andreas)

Dioh and Andreas have collaborated to bring to life a beautiful lullaby for Dioh’s little treasures. A loving mother with much strength and tenderness in her heart, and a professional composer who acted as a “lever”, helping her translate this strength and tenderness into a heart-warming song, to be shared with her children and the world. 

This contact that takes place during the process of the Lullaby Project is indicative of one of the main messages of the project itself, which accentuates the role of music as one of the most powerful social tools and a vehicle that strengthens the human bond. 

The social power of music is something that Andreas also emphasizes when he speaks about his experience with the Lullaby Project. And, indeed, when one considers the many and varied backgrounds from which the participants of the Lullaby Project come from, be it the parents, the composers, and many other team members, and the way music in general and lullabies in particular becomes their unifying element, their common purpose, this becomes even more evident. 

Lullabies carry within them a universality that is felt and understood by all. Existent from the ancient years and within every civilization, and still strongly relevant today, they are one of those cultural forms that show a deeper connection to what is human at its core level. The love of parents (or caregivers) for their children, the passing on of songs through oral tradition, the will to soothe babies to sleep with beautiful images of stars, and moons, and light, and hope… is something that can be felt across the globe and throughout time.

And the way, through the Lullaby Project, parents have the experience of creating their unique lullaby, for their unique connection for their babies, and share this with other parents and children around the world adds up to that experience of universality, by emphasizing that each individual is – and should be – equal part of the whole. Through the project, each parent is given a voice. And each voice becomes significant for all. 

So, when Dioh sings to her little ones the lullaby she and Andreas composed, she at the same time becomes a significant figure, a universal voice, that shares her experience and tenderness with everyone in this world. 

Watch Andreas’ interview about his experience here. 

Artist collaborating with mother: Andreas Michalopoulos

Lullaby Supported by: Frederick University  

Follow Sistema Cyprus’ social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram to experience the journey of Lullaby creation.

“The majestic beauty of genuine love”

(Louise & Yiorgos)

A composer’s work can be a lonely process – even at its most creative and fruitful, it often takes place in the confinement of one’s own mind and behind closed “doors”. For the Lullaby Project, composers have to step out of their creative confinement and collaborate with parents, becoming guides and vehicles for musically materializing the love songs they want to write for their children.

The different approach required for the Lullaby Project might at first appear as challenging, but, as Yiorgos says, it is an experience filled with beauty. To closely collaborate with a parent who sets out to creatively express the pure, genuine sentiments that come with parental love opens up new creative windows, through which emotional contact, empathy, and human communication at the most fundamental level can enter. 

The apparent simplicity that characterizes lullabies as musical forms, leaves ample room for this purity of emotions to shine; to reach the baby, lull it to sleep, and open the door to beautiful dreams where safety, hope, and love prevail. 

This is what happens every time Louise sings to her little boy the lullaby she wrote for him with the guidance of Yiorgos; a new creative experience that was revealing for both the composer and her. An experience that produced another unique expression of the majestic beauty of genuine love to be shared with her baby and the whole world. 

Artist collaborating with mother: Yiorgos Christofi 

Lullaby Supported by: EY Cyprus 

Follow Sistema Cyprus’ social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram to experience the journey of Lullaby creation.

“Love of my life”

(Aurelie & Georgia)

New mother Aurelie and professional composer Georgia collaborated for the creation of a lullaby, a love song for a little miracle none of them had yet met when the Lullaby Project began. As a pregnant woman, Aurelie was experiencing this miracle firsthand. The expectation for her little treasure, who had already changed her life merely through the announcement of his arrival.

The emotions of hope, of affection, of love, that Aurelie was experiencing during her pregnancy, found their way into the creative process of writing the lullaby. They informed it, they adorned it, they unfolded into words and melodies – they became materializations of love and produced the birth of another miracle to accompany the arrival of Aurelie’s son. 

Georgia, the artistic agent that assisted in bringing this musical materialization to life, experienced her own journey of emotional and creative growth. As she says, Aurelie’s persistent use of the word miracle made her realize that life itself is a miracle. And what a greater evidence for that than the arrival of the little miracle that has been the inspiration and the emotional beacon that lit the creation of this beautiful lullaby… his lullaby… the one that belongs solely to him…

…which, at the same time, he will share with all the children of this world. 

You can read previous blog posts about Lullaby #3 here and here. 

Artist collaborating with mother: Georgia Chrystoforou

Lullaby Sponsor: XM Cyprus

Follow Sistema Cyprus’ social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram to experience the journey of Lullaby creation.

Follow Sistema Cyprus’ social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram to experience the journey of Lullaby creation.

To find out more about Sistema Cyprus, please visit the website: www.sistemacyprus.com