Shain Shapiro with Greg Scruggs

Told through personal stories from cities around the world — including London, Melbourne, Nashville, Austin, and Zurich — This Must Be the Place demonstrates how integral music is to everyday life, yet how consistently music is ignored in public policy. Specifically, Shapiro references the transformative role that artists and musicians played in revitalizing elements of our post-pandemic world.

In addition to spotlighting the connection between music and building cities, This Must be the Place serves as a guide and toolkit for music enthusiasts, artists, and activists who seek to utilize music as a tool for reinventing their community.

Join Shain Shapiro at Town Hall, for an examination of the way music informs the building of a city, and how we can use music to strengthen our communities going forward.

Shain Shapiro, Ph.D. is one of the world’s leading music and cultural policy thinkers. He is the founder and chairman of economics consultancy Sound Diplomacy, founder and director of the global nonprofit Center for Music Ecosystems and author of This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better. Shain has pioneered the work of music cities and music ecosystem policy, where music is written into how cities and places plan and invest in their future.

Gregory Scruggs is a Seattle-based journalist. He is a correspondent for leading international cultural magazine Monocle and also works on the features desk at The Seattle Times. His reporting on how public policy impacts music scenes have been published in outlets such as The New York Times, Bloomberg CityLab, VICE, Next City, Seattle Weekly, and The Stranger.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle.