Music Beyond Borders: Voices From the Seven was a free concert in response to the executive order banning travel and immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries in January 2017.

The concert featured music and artists from all of the seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. 

Many of the Seattle Symphony’s musicians are immigrants, and it was important to live out the organization’s core values of inclusivity, collaboration and respect and act on the Symphony’s mission to bring people together through music.

Project

Within hours 2,400 free tickets were reserved to this concert. Our team organized a free live broadcast so this cultural exchange could be experienced by communities across the country and world. Before and after the event, the orchestra’s social media platforms shared content highlighting composers, artists and musicians from the seven impacted countries and stories of how the universal language of music has the potential to facilitate an open exchange of ideas.

I coordinated translation so the concert slides included the languages of the seven banned countries and helped shape the narrative through event copy for press releases, website and emails, and speaking points and social media moderation during the event.

Campaign

• Live concert broadcast on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter/Periscope

• Social media campaign

• Email campaign

• Web content

Outcome

• More than 5 million impressions across channels

• Over 1.9 million impressions on Facebook

• Engagement increased by 182% across channels

• More than 350,000 people around the world watched

• Press coverage in The Seattle Times, Seattle Met, CNN, HuffPost, KNKX Radio and more

• Q13 Fox and KIRO 7 picked up the livestream

• #MusicBeyondBorders trended on Twitter with over 6,200 mentions during the concert