13 Haz EYPers from around the network will visit Iceland for the first time

Einar Stefánsson, currently a student at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, got involved with EYP in 2012 and in 2015 started working bringing EYP to Iceland, his second motherland. We asked him a couple of questions regarding the plans and future developments of one of the youngest initiatives in our network.

What motivated you to start working on EYP in Iceland?

Setting up EYP in Iceland has been a dream of mine ever since I first got involved in the network back in 2012, and I first started working on this around three years ago. Admittedly, the project has demanded much more patience, stubbornness and hard work then I imagined. While 2016 was a year full of milestones and success, for example, when we founded the organisation, elected our first Board and were granted Initiative status, there was no activity or progress whatsoever for the following 18 months or so. Now, however, things have suddenly taken a new turn!

What is currently happening in EYP Iceland?

At the moment, we have a handful of super committed and hard-working Icelanders who are bringing new life and hope to the project. We are currently working tirelessly on what promises to be a terrific first-ever EYP session in Iceland – ‘Reykjavík 2018’. Please follow our Facebook page for calls for the remaining positions for officials, as well as for international delegates! We cannot wait to bring EYP and EYPers from around the Network to Iceland in September! I am so much looking forward to showing the Icelanders what this is all about. The big aim is of course that this event will recruit loads of new Icelanders to our organisation, to build up the new NC, as what we are really lacking now is people. We need locals to join in order for the organisation to become sustainable, so please get in touch if you live in Iceland or know of anyone who does! As Iceland is a quite small country, there is good hope that we can reach out very broadly and really make a difference in the community quite quickly, as soon as we manage to develop the organisation a bit further.

What are your long-term plans?

We are planning our next Annual Meeting for later this month, where we will elect a new Board as well as start thinking a bit ahead to see what tasks are most pressing after the big session in September.

With time we will also start thinking about how we want to shape the NC – what kind of events are most fitting for us, develop our strategy and values, think about how to relate to the rest of the EYP network and so on. There are so many exciting things to discuss and develop and try out, so now we just need more members (currently we only have around 5 active members). A lot of good work has already been done, but the whole thing is still very fragile and there is a lot of work still to be done before we can declare the project a definite success… If things continue developing at the current speed, however, it shouldn’t take long until we are able to welcome loads of more Europeans to Iceland for our events, as well as bringing Icelanders to Europe!