Vocations’ music competition hopes to hit the high notes

Director of Vocations Ireland Margaret Cartwright tells Ruadhán Jones about an exciting initiative to highlight vocations

In January 2017, Pope Francis told a vocations conference in Italy that the Church urgently needs to “bring into the Christian community a new ‘vocational culture’”. The Pope closed his speech that day by praying that those present would feel pushed by the Holy Spirit to “courageously identify new ways of announcing the Gospel of vocation”.

Vocational culture

Through the recently announced ‘Vocations Music Award’, vocation offices in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland hope to create just such a ‘vocational culture’. “We hope to open people’s minds and hearts and thoughts to what vocation means and what the culture of vocation means,” says Margaret Cartwright, director of Vocations Ireland.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic before the launch of the awards, Ms Cartwright emphasises the importance of getting young people ”to look at their own vocation in life, whether it be to religious life, priesthood, marriage, single life, to help them to write and express that through music. The theme is vocation, and the song or piece of music has to have that theme in it.”

The award is an initiative in its infancy, but the organisers have high hopes that it will be a means to reach out to young people during the pandemic. The brainchild of an Austrian seminarian, the competition was initially only run in Austria. Despite this, it was still very successful, far beyond the expectations of the organisers.

”It’s the first year that we’re involved, the Austrians have run this competition before but not with the theme of vocations,” Ms Cartwright explains. “It’s the first time that it’s been opened out to a wider audience in Europe, so it’s our first-time being part of it. They had a lot of entries (last year) and actually they produced a CD of the 12 winners. They got millions of likes and votes through Facebook. They got a really far reach, they were staggered, they didn’t expect such a response.

And a lot of them are expressing their own prayer life and spirituality in music, so we thought yeah, we’ll go for it”

“I would hope for such a similar response, especially in the light of Covid, where people are struggling with what to do with their time. This will give people an opportunity to tap into their creative energy and talents. It’s also an opportunity for young people to showcase what they can do. Those opportunities aren’t very wide at the moment.”

In previous years, the competition ended with a full-blown concert or competition and there was plenty of live music. This year, due to Covid-19, the competition will be run virtually through YouTube, Facebook and other such social media, Ms Cartwright says.

“Before Covid-19, the plan was that we’ll take part and our winner may have gone to Austria to take part in the final show,” Ms Cartwright continues. “But Covid kicked in in the meantime. We’ve pursued it further, we’ve had lots of conversations and we felt this was a good time to actually run with it because young people are turning to music during Covid and it’s something that they’d be able to write and get great relief from. And a lot of them are expressing their own prayer life and spirituality in music, so we thought yeah, we’ll go for it.

Original piece

“The participants have to write a piece of music or song, it has to be an original piece which they will then put on YouTube. And then, we’ll be asking people to like it and vote for it. After a certain length of time, we’ll collate the likes and the votes and they’ll throw that together. The results from that will then go to a judging panel and we have for Ireland four judges at the moment. We have Joe Boyce from CJM Music; Brendan O’Regan, journalist with The Irish Catholic; Fr Willie Purcell, diocesan vocation director; and we’re hoping we’ll have Sr Gabriel from the Poor Clares in Arundel.

“We’re just finalising the issues around the prizes. It would normally be live productions and stuff like that, so we’re in discussions with a few producers to see if we might streamline and put it through streaming to make it easier to handle rather than making a CD,” Ms Cartwright says.

When asked if the competition was a big departure from Vocations Ireland’s usual approach, Ms Cartwright answers with a qualified yes. The line of work is still the same – promoting vocations – but the format is different to accommodate the changed times of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I would have been involved in career fairs and youth gatherings,” Ms Cartwright explains. “We’d have taken a stand at those places and offered assistance to people who might be considering vocation, a religious vocation. I would have been involved in that and the Explore a Way program which would again have been a program for those who want to reflect and explore their feelings about vocations. Obviously because of Covid we can’t do that at the moment. So this is an opportunity to do something for young people. It is about vocation awareness, it’s helping people to be aware of what a vocation is and where their vocation might be, their calling from God.”

While the organisation and delivery of the competition are reaching the final stages, Ms Cartwright says they are still looking for partners and sponsors in order to make the endeavour a special one.

“We’re looking for people to support the project,” she says. “Obviously, we have to find money for prizes and things like that so if there’s countries who might be interested in sponsoring for a prize or a musical instrument – or a recording studio who would be willing to give a couple of hours free as a prize. Those are the kind of things that we’re looking for at the moment. Some people have already offered and some congregations are supporting us. The main expense would be the website and the prizes for the six winners. We’re looking for people to support in anyway they can, through prizes, money and prayers”

Submission

The opening date for submission of entries is February 2021, while submissions close on July 31, 2021. Professional judging will take place in August 2021, while the CD or streaming release will take place in Autumn 2022 at the latest. For more information visit here.