Creative Education Studio Revolutionizing the Georgian Music Scene
Interview
Natia Sartiana-Kituashvili, also known as sTia, founded the Creative Education Studio in Tbilisi, a design, audio and music media school which aims to develop a new generation of talented, creative people in the art and music fields.
Natia, a classical pianist by origin, having played for the Tbilisi Philharmonic Orchestra at the tender age of seven, continued her education in London, UK. Her approach to music found its expression in different genres and so it happened that she became one of the first female DJs to bring Drum´n´Bass to Georgia.
In 2011, she founded the CES and later, in 2018, the record studio CES Records, which just recently published its first disc ´Sleepers, Poets, Scientists´. The Calvert Journal described this as a “gentle, healing record; a respite from the industrial, bass-heavy ´new club music´.“
GEORGIA TODAY met the founder of the experimental school for an interview on location in Fabrika to find out more.
Why did you found the Creative Education Studio?
Eight years ago, there was no place like CES and we were completely unfamiliar with new technologies in music and music media. Georgia, and Georgian musicians especially, were pretty desperate at that time, so we wanted to fill this gap.
How has your school grown in the past eight years?
We started CES in a small room running just two or three courses, including sound engineering, DJing and music production, with only 11 students. Now we have 1,500 graduated students and more than 400 currently involved in studying. This is our third location in Tbilisi. We´re expanding in all directions and have 15 different active courses with different lengths in five studios.
What is the CES mission?
CES is, first of all, a place to connect people with the same interests. It is the perfect space for collaboration. Our students can develop their creative, artistic selves freely and find like-minded people to work with.
What is the message you want to share with your students?
Try to make living from something you really love. There are so many people who spend their time working on something they don´t really like, but I want my students to stick with what they really love and spend their time wisely.
Do a lot of your students aim to work abroad?
It‘s not like it used to be; 10 years ago everyone wanted to leave Georgia and do something incredible abroad. Now, more and more youngsters are happy to stay here, setting up their own businesses. Now they can survive here, doing what they love. We have better times and more youngsters are involved: they feel empowered to change things.
Where would you like to see your school in 10 years?
We definitely want to expand. We‘re planning to have twice the number of studios and to offer a degree. We still have lots of students who are at university and studying there for a degree and in parallel working with us. Hopefully, in 10 years, we can give them the chance to take fulltime studies at CES.
Tell us about CES Records.
CES Records, started this year, was a big step forwards, and we‘ve already released a compilation of nine female local artists, called ´Sleepers, Poets, Scientists´. Now we are about to release something new in May and another one in June, with a total of five releases set for this year. It makes the perfect platform for students to take their music out and into the world.
Tell us about your new release.
Our new release is going to be published on May 16, a music single called ´RunRun,' with two covers. The single comes with a fairytale by well-established Georgian writer Nestan Nene Kvinikadze and an artbook of photographs of the high mountains of Tusheti from Uta Bekaia. It also comes with the sheet music, so you can actually play the music yourself. We try to do more than just music: we want to make this label something special and unique in the music scene.
By Lisa Maier