The idea for Heavy Heads sparked from seeing a need and an interest within the dance community as well as the community as a whole in Sweden. A need for a plattform where people of all ages can come to enjoy, express and share within a specific nisch. Me and my co-funder of Heavy Heads decided to create instead of just waiting for someone else to provide what we felt was needed and that is how it all started. Our vision was and still is to create with the music and the atmosphere as the main focus so I will start to explain that a bit deeper.
The core of this event is the music. The kind of music that get you grooving and making your head nod in time with the beat. Boom bap, old school hip hop and just heavy tracks with raw vibes. We believe that the quality of music will make or break any event whether it’s aimed at dance or music in itself. Therefor we are aiming to invite some of the finest DJ’s in the nordic countries. We will also bring in the contrast of live music with a carefully chosen liveact, bringing that flavor, rawness, imperfection and vibe you get when it’s live. Now lastly the person that brings all of this together, from the audience to the DJ’s, the host. To fill this precious position we will also bring one of Sweden’s and Europe’s best in this craft. Blessing the mic and the floor, she will carry us from the beginning to the end. The focus on music is one of the things that makes this event special and that separates it from other events. As I have mentioned the event is first and formost a jam, we want to focus on the music and create an atmosphere that is open, relaxed and welcoming. During the evening there will be a dance battle which is a competition, an exchange and a way to represent yourself and your style. It’s a two versus two which means that you compete in couples. There will be an all female judge panel. The reason behind this is that we want to provide a space and plattform for women to show their craft and excellence since we feel this is something that is lacking in our current scene. A lot is changing within the dance community currently and we are moving forward with Breaking making it’s way into the Olympics and structural changes after the #metoo movement, we are a part of that change and are incorporating these active topics. Constantly trying to figure out how to do our part for a better future.
We want to create a plattform for young people to experience, participate, learn and find a sense of togetherness and community. With our event we want to get youth’s to attend cultural events and spark an interest and want to be more active as well as to be inspired to create and express. Due to the rising technology, exclusion and mental illness we notice that people of all ages, but especially young people, are less enthusiastic about attending anything with social interaction. This is a reason why social and cultural events have become important and essential in today’s society. Since we are organizing an event mainly focused on hip hop culture we want to give the public a chance to experience a club environment and the battle culture in a safe environment. No tolerance for drugs, alcohol and violence.
We want to support international collaboration both on a wider front but also starting on a smaller scale with the nordic countries. As we have mentioned before we are aiming to invite some of the finest DJ’s in the nordic countries. We will also invite people that are established and great within their field as well as young and passionate dancers from our own and neighboring countries. The reason why we want to invite these people is to strengthen the bonds and relationship between the nordic countries and our scenes. To create a wider community and togetherness in the global spiderweb. Through their participation we hope to inspire each other’s communities and to open doors for future collaborations and contact.
This is the second edition and last year was very successful and we recieved amazing feedback from both the audience, volunteers and the staff. Below you can see some statistics and we have included a recap video of the event.
STATISTICS: based on Heavy Heads 2019
under the age of 25 in the audience : 70
participants in the battle : 40 (20 pairs)
gender statistics – audience : female 40%, male 60%
gender statistics – staff : female 50%, male 50%
We are hoping to produce another great edition this year we hope you can help us achieve our goal!
Our main worry is that we won’t reach our aim for the budget. This worry stems from the fact that last year we invested quite a lot of money ourselves due to the fact that we didn’t reach out goal but we felt we wanted to go through with the event because we believed in our idea and vision. This year however neither me or my co-funder are in the economical position to repeat that investment and that is why we are turning to new plattforms.