Before OneBeat came into being, Found Sound Nation led projects and collaborated with artists young and old, all over the world. In 2011, we were invited to the Lucerne Music Festival in Switzerland and asked to design a project that would better connect the festival to the Lucerne community. The result was our very first Street Studio, which follows a simple premise: Transport the basic elements of a music studio to a public place, and make the studio open and accessible to everyone in the local community, musicians and non-musicians alike. With a simple setup – a laptop, a couple of mics, midi controllers, and speakers – we invited passers-by and festival musicians to join in a music creation session that is completely improvised. The result was refreshing — playful, varied, singular tracks that incorporated the sounds & voices of an extremely diverse Lucerne community, and a newfound connection to this lovely Swiss city. We realized that the Street Studio had an extraordinary ability to capture the particular energy of a time and place, tapping into the “collective unconscious” that surrounds the Street Studio. Since that time, we’ve led street studios in dozens of contexts on 5 continents. Check out our original Street Studio project in Lucerne, Switzerland here.