Mapping and Accelerating City Music Ecosystem

Mapping and Accelerating City Music Ecosystem

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Mantautas Krukauskas

Map the Ecosystem Layers

This step focuses on deepening the understanding of the music ecosystem by creating a layered representation of stakeholders, institutions, infrastructures, and emerging roles. Building upon the scope and foundational data in Step 1, this phase shifts towards structuring the ecosystem landscape through stakeholder typologies and representative user personas.

Using design thinking methodology, the team facilitated collaborative sessions to define distinct stakeholder categories, identifying their roles, motivations, and interrelations. This enabled us to define and map not only the formal components of the ecosystem - such as public institutions, educational entities, and commercial venues - but also informal and hybrid actors including independent curators, cultural entrepreneurs, digital creators, community organisers etc. active in the creative and tech sectors.

To capture diverse perspectives and challenges, a set of personas was developed. These are fictional but research-based profiles that reflect real user types found in the Vilnius music ecosystem. These personas helped surface key friction points and revealed gaps in support structures, particularly around interdisciplinary collaboration, space accessibility, and professional sustainability.

This step resulted in a layered understanding of the ecosystem, showing intersections between institutional, community-based, and individual actors. It laid the groundwork for identifying potential leverage points for targeted intervention, ecosystem development strategies, and midground collaborations.

Supporting Materials:

Stakeholder types and roles
Defined Personas

Mapping Needs and Target Groups

This step focused on collecting qualitative and quantitative (where available) data on the existing music ecosystem in Vilnius, aligning with the broader goal of mapping and accelerating city-level music innovation, to frame and define scope and goals of this pilot. The process began with identifying and analyzing cultural, educational, and industry institutions, along with networks, venues, and independent initiatives that influence or participate in the musical life of the city.

A collaborative Miro board served as a central visualization tool, enabling project participants to map various layers of the ecosystem in real time. These included public and private infrastructures, grassroots and institutional actors, formal and informal music venues, educational pipelines, and innovation hubs.

The team conducted stakeholder interviews, co-design workshops, and secondary data reviews. This process was informed by the Mosaic Summer School challenge held in July 2025, during which interdisciplinary participants from business, design, cultural industries, and the arts co-developed a series of personas and friction points within the Vilnius music ecosystem.

An adapted Stakeholder engagement rationale was developed to document these archetypes, and a layered stakeholder matrix was used to distinguish between institutional, community-based, and individual ecosystem actors.

This step laid the foundation for defining strategic directions and pinpointing actionable insights. It created a shared language and visual reference for understanding and evolving the ecosystem in a collaborative and cross-sectoral manner.

Supporting Materials:

Framing of the scope and goals
Detalisation of pilot rationale
Stakeholder engagement rationale

Identify Needs and Strategic Levers

This step translated the mapped ecosystem insights into strategic directions. Building upon the stakeholder typologies and ecosystem layers identified in previous steps, the team synthesized key observations, recurring challenges, and underutilized opportunities that emerged from interviews, workshops, and the Mosaic challenge process.

The analysis focused on identifying systemic barriers to collaboration, growth, and innovation - such as the siloed nature of cultural institutions, lack of visibility for informal actors, scarcity of mid-size venues, and weak bridges between the public and independent sectors.

In parallel, we outlined key insights on needs and potentials, for example, demand for cross-sectoral activities, infrastructure for collaboration, and capacity-building in community leadership.

These findings were then grouped into strategic levers: areas where targeted actions or policy changes could have significant ripple effects. These included fostering physical and symbolic middle-grounds, strengthening policy feedback loops, enhancing visibility for music culture, and supporting bottom-up innovation platforms.

This step helped define a set of actionable directions usable by Vilnius City Council, cultural agencies, and ecosystem stakeholders to align around, and can serve as an example for other cities facing similar fragmentation.

Supporting Materials:

Key insights summary
List of key problems and barriers
Actionable strategic directions (short and long-term)

Prototype Tools and Solution

In this step, the ecosystem mapping insights and strategic directions were translated into visual and actionable formats to support ongoing ecosystem development and public sector decision-making. The aim was to create modular, adaptable tools that can inform policy, enable community initiatives, and facilitate strategic alignment among diverse stakeholders.

A set of solution cards was created to reflect the key intervention areas identified in Step 3. Each card outlines a specific challenge, suggested action, potential partners, and indicators of impact. These cards can be used as prompts in policy workshops, participatory planning, or internal strategy sessions.

To support communication and learning, a sample visualization was designed to represent the layered Vilnius music ecosystem in a digestible way. It offers a snapshot of the interplay between institutional, community-based, and commercial actors.

Finally, a workshop format template was developed, enabling other cities or institutions to replicate the participatory process of co-defining ecosystem needs, leverage points, and mid-ground interventions. This replicable format ensures the tool’s scalability and usefulness beyond the pilot context.

This step bridges analysis and action, equipping stakeholders with formats they can use to continue ecosystem development, either in planning, advocacy, or experimentation settings.

Supporting Materials:

Sample ecosystem visualization
Solution cards
Workshop format template

This pilot demonstrates how strategic music ecosystem mapping can align creative potential with strategic city cultural industry development goals. A key turning point was the collaboration with Mosaic Creativity and Innovation Research Hub (coordinated by HEC Montreal, Canada), where international students and professionals from Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Lithuanian, and other countries co-created the research of the pilot, identified ecosystem gaps, and proposed actionable solutions. This brought global thinking to local challenges, while positioning music as a strategic urban asset.

A particularly powerful quote from a participant: “Vilnius feels like a city vibrating with creativity, but lacking the instruments to tune itself. This challenge made us think of ourselves not as outsiders, but as part of the orchestra.”

The tool served to ignite cross-sector dialogue, particularly through the ongoing discussion where policymakers, cultural actors, and researchers debated scenarios for music ecosystem acceleration. By the end of the pilot, the mapping approach had inspired new discussions with city representatives on strategic cultural zoning, spaces/places and events, use of underutilized venues and ecosystem actors, and artist interconnectivity.

Disseminate

The final step focuses on the synthesis, documentation, and strategic dissemination of the project outcomes. Following the mapping, engagement, and prototyping processes, a consolidated summary was produced to make the project insights actionable for broader audiences.

A detailed summary report was prepared, providing both analytical conclusions and proposed directions. This document reflects the contributions of trans-sectoral actors, including students and creative professionals from cities Vilnius, Montréal, Nantes, Barcelona, and other cities. Full Mosaic Summer School Challenge report is attached as well.

The team also created a list of suggested actions tailored to the context of Vilnius, aimed at informing cultural policy and ecosystem development. These proposals are structured to support both short-term experimentation and longer-term systemic alignment across the creative and institutional sectors.

By making these materials publicly available, the tool extends its reach and contributes to knowledge-sharing across similar contexts.

Supporting Materials:

• Summary report

• Mosaic Summer School challenge report

• List of suggested actions for city council

Mapping and Accelerating City Music Ecosystem

Mantautas Krukauskas