What? How? and for W ...

The Brief Project Description consists of six components.

Have in mind who the intended recipient of this project description is. Will it be for a sponsor in order to get funding? Will it be for a presenter? Will it be for a crowdfunding campaign? This can affect the content you want to focus on and it can also affect the order of the following six components. It can make sense to put a short elevator pitch of the project before going into depth with your project description.

1. Describe your project
What is it about? How will you work on it? What will the timeline be? When do you expect to be able to deliver?

Be aware that people’s concentration span is often very short and you want to bring your message across in a very short time. If you like, you can also describe parts of your project from the point of view of the audience/consumer/etc. in order to make the situation or your message as clear as possible.

2. Describe your deliverables
A deliverable is a tangible or intangible product, performance or service produced as a result of a project that is intended to be delivered to a customer/client/audience.

What will you deliver? A musical product, an idea that is worth paying for, a piece of art, a method, a workshop, a concert planned and organised by you, a new album or online release, a concert tour, a new band that performs new repertoire, a multidisciplinary performance etc.

3. Describe the values you will create with your project
Think about the values your project will create. This is an exercise to make you aware of the values you create with your short- and long-term goals. Once you have defined these values, it will be easier to describe what the essence of your project is. 

Examples of values that can be created:

♦ artistic values: developing new insights in the performance practice, creating a new genre or style, shedding new light on (the interpretation of) existing works, creating new art           

♦ economic values: making money to generate income or to make investments, creating work opportunities                           

♦ educational values: providing others and/or yourself with skills or knowledge              

♦ knowledge values: contributing to the body of knowledge                                   

♦ social values: creating an inclusive society with equal chances for all human beings, contributing to the sustainability of our planet

4. Describe the background and motivation of your project
What motivates you? Where does the idea for your project come from? What drives you? What is personal about it?

5. Describe your short-term goals
What are the short-term goals you would like to achieve with your deliverable?

Short-term goals are measurable immediately after the deliverable has been delivered. They are quantifiable: relating to, or expressible in terms of quantity -  you can count them.

Why do short term goals have to be quantifiable? To start a project, you may need to make investments. Investments mostly from yourself but likely also from others. The people who will invest in your project want to see hard, concrete figures and timelines. They will invest if they can check that you can deliver what you promised. Short term goals are thus concrete. You can count them or represent them in numbers. And you can measure or check whether they have been met immediately after the delivery has taken place.

Examples of short-term goals: the number of people involved (artists, audience, customers, etc.), size of your deliverable (number of performances, duration of an album or performance, number of workshops, number of instruction videos, etc.) and of course an estimated timeline.

6. Describe your long-term goals 
Long-term goals are the ones you try to achieve in time, sometimes years after you delivered. They have to do with the bigger picture. They can only be assessed a long time after the deliverable has been delivered. 

Long-term goals will mostly be formulated in qualitative terms. Qualitative means relating to, or measured by the quality or characteristics of something, rather than its quantity.

Long-term goals are your drivers, they motivate you.

Examples of long-term goals: letting children experience jazz music, addressing a social issue, making a name for yourself or your band, being able to make a living, establishing a teaching practice, becoming skilled in creating interdisciplinary performances, being able to connect with people through music, promoting Polish folk music, etc.