Give Music A Chance: GMAC62

Music & culture

May 12

Written By Annikken Grieg Sæthre

Who: Give Music a Chance Norway

What: GMAC62

Where: Bergen, Norway

Project period: 2025

About the project:

GMAC62 is a new musical meeting place for young people between the ages of 13 and 24 in the center of Bergen. GMAC62 aims to meet young people where they are. GMAC 62 brings together free instrument lending, instrument repair, music lessons, courses, and concerts, and offers an environment where young people can learn to play, build, borrow and repair instruments. The project has a strong focus on sustainability, reuse, and social inclusion. GMAC62 will be an arena for participation, mastery, repair, and community building.

Some of the activities offered at GMAC62:

Free rental of instruments and equipment through www.instrumentbanken.no
Open stage where young people can gain experience playing in front of an audience
Workshop for repairing instruments and electronics, where we try to combine retired people with young people to create an environment for transfer of knowledge and competence.
Courses in guitar and piano playing, songwriting and music production, in collaboration with amongst other the organization AKKS
"Give Darkness a Chance" - a meeting place for young metal and goth enthusiasts
Løft Løvstakken – an inclusion project aimed at reaching youth with minority backgrounds from an underserved part of Bergen
Guitar building courses with recycled parts collected through the local waste management company BIR
Free concert series and collaboration with local artists
Basic studio facility where youth can practice and learn how to record music
A walk-in music room where youth can play and create music after school. The room is fully equipped with backline and instruments, including instruments from famous Norwegian artists.

By giving new life to used instruments and making music accessible to everyone, the project bridges the gap between sustainability and cultural development.

About the organization:

Give Music a Chance – Norway (GMAC) is a non-profit organization that works to provide musical instruments for children and young people. Historically, we have collected used and broken musical instruments, repair them and donate them to music schools in among others DR Congo, Haiti, Mozambique and Palestine. The last two years, GMAC has also established local projects where instruments are lent out for free to young people who would like to play an instrument. Our new location GMAC62 opens in May 2025, where we will co-locate repair workshop, free rentals of instruments as well as workshops, concerts and other free activities for young people.

Our philosophy is based on two basic pillars:

Music must become sustainable, and we reuse instruments and train instrument repair technicians to maintain and repair instruments.
Music is a tool for development, and we want to give young people the opportunity to experience the joy of music.