The Great Escape has today revealed that their international partner for the 2014 festival will be Music Finland.

Over the past eight years the festival’s cross-continent partnerships have enabled new artists and musicians from around the world to come to the attention of the varied and influential audience at The Great Escape.

Music Finland is the new organisation dedicated to promoting awareness and the success of Finnish music at home and abroad. Music Finland creates and manages a wide variety of services, marketing programmes, events, networking opportunities, training, consultancy, support, research, information and funding programmes. The activities aim to maximize success for Finnish music and music companies, and increase Finnish music export revenue.

Kat Morris, Managing Director of The Great Escape, commented "As we begin to approach TGE 2014 our ninth Great Escape, we are truly delighted to announce Finland as our lead international partner. Over the years Finnish artists have become a prominent and highly anticipated fixture in our line up and we feel the time is right to thrust the Finnish music industry into the spotlight like never before at The Great Escape. We can't wait.’

Music Finland’s Project Manager Riku Salomaa said, ‘We are proud to be the lead country at The Great Escape in 2014. The Finnish music industry has actively created connections and built awareness in the UK over the years. In the last two years, the UK has been the focus country for the exports of Finnish music. With more than 60 Finnish artists, songwriters, composers and music products introduced to the UK market and gathering wide press coverage in British media, the results have truly been great. With this in mind, we feel it is the right time for us to partner with the biggest industry event in the UK and showcase the wide variety of talented Finnish acts to the international music industry family.’

The Great Escape will return to the bustling British seaside city of Brighton from the 8-10 May 2014, presenting festival-goers with over 400 new artists, from local to international acts, across 35 different venues throughout the city. Running alongside this is the Great Escape convention which hosts a variety of insightful industry talks, panel debates, targeted networking sessions and keynote interviews for industry professionals and music business fans.