Asia

In a Thai border town, violin lessons are building community among Burmese refugees.

An ensemble music camp for young players across Southeast Asia’s Greater Bay Area is drawing the attention of international musicians.

As in many countries around the world, education has become a machine in India. This machine does a good job of building left-brain capabilities, but as Yale scholar Iain McGilchrist argues in his book The Master and His Emissary, our left brain is an exceptional servant but a very poor master. At the Baithak Foundation, this sentiment was more important than we ever realized. When we started working with traditional Indian music as a tool for holistic development of children, we were totally unaware that we were addressing the lack of stimuli and opportunities to develop the right brain in our educational system.

There are many ways that music builds bridges across cultures, and technology is playing a big role in accelerating those connections. Here are a few recent examples we’re seeing that may be of particular interest to readers in Asia and the Middle East.

Arts and cultural professionals from across Asia are invited to apply for the Mekong Cultural Hub’s Curated Conference Fellowship, part of their Meeting Point on Art & Social Action in Asia.

In a city like Mumbai, India’s financial capital, 300 out of the 400 public schools do not have a designated art teacher. Many schools rely on academic subject teachers to handle “art classes,” despite their lack of formal training or experience. While working in rural and remote regions, we realized that the situation worsened outside of Mumbai, reflecting a nationwide trend that affects over 250 million children in government and low-income private schools. Recognizing that hiring specialized art teachers was not feasible for many schools, we developed the “Art for Educator” (AFE) program to empower existing teachers as facilitators of visual arts and SEL.

In August 2024, the Festival of Dreams brought together young artists from across South Korea to a camp held in the mountains of Pyeongchang province. The camp brought together members of the Youth Orchestra of Dreams and the Youth Dance Team of Dreams for the first time, and they united to form the Arts Group of Dreams. The three-day camp culminated in a joint performance that showcased their collective talents.

Carnegie Hall’s World Orchestra Week festival in August was a week of one “WOW!” after another, as seven youth orchestras from five different continents joined forces in and around Carnegie Hall to play for and with each other, to share singular musical works and ethos from their countries, and to show us all what the next generation’s Wishes for Our World might be.