Europe

Arts Council England commissioned Nordicity, in association with World Pencil, to undertake an evaluation of the In Harmony program.

Last June, we told you about UNICEF’s #ChildrenUprooted campaign, which set out to portray three refugee children in Greece as video game heroes.

El Sistema Greece is a free music education program open to all children in Greece. Because our students come from more than 30 different countries, the impact of the work we do, both with refugee children and with the larger local community encompassing both migrants and natives, is twofold.

The slogan of Orquestra Geração suggests something deeper than just playing music. The idea of touching lives (in Portuguese, “tocamos” means “we play/we touch”) asserts that we can positively transform the lives of children and young people through music, giving them a feeling of unlimited potential. What I didn’t know before teaching in this program was that the slogan would apply to me as well, and that my life would be so intensely touched and transformed.

Songs for Europe is a new web tool for musical pedagogy practice and teacher training, using technology to assess the effectiveness of choral instruction and orchestral studies. Its performance evaluation tool can measure student attentiveness, performance, and engagement levels to maximize teaching impact. Teaching artists from Austria, Greece, Slovakia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are participating in the initiative by implementing these tools in their work. Results and outcomes are made public in an archived online library; check out the methodology and library on their website.

The fifth annual international SIMM-posium (Research Symposium on the Social Impact of Making Music), originally scheduled to occur in Brussels last month, has been postponed and reorganized as a nine-week series of online webinars beginning on January 12. The webinars are free and open to all. You can find detailed information on the full program on the SIMM website. Registration is on the Bozar website; you must register for each session separately.

Last month, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music recognized Dream Orchestra Director (and El Sistema Sweden Artistic Director) Ron Davis Álvarez with the Göran Lagervall Pedagogy Prize for “his activities in 40 cultural schools, where he renewed the pedagogical orchestral tradition with his experience from Venezuela.” Just days later, Álvarez conducted a performance for the Global Teacher Prize Award Gala, hosted digitally this year. A former candidate for the Global Teacher Prize himself, Álvarez conducted 70 students from ten countries in a performance of Sara Bareilles’ song “Brave.” Afterward, Álvarez was kind enough to sit down with The World Ensemble to discuss his busy week, his experiences with the Dream Orchestra, and his pedagogical philosophy.

This past year, El Sistema Sweden and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra demonstrated how effective virtual programming could be in hosting an all-digital Side by Side International Youth Orchestra and Choir Camp. Normally a summer hub for over a thousand young musicians from all over the world, the online camp still provided an intense week of youth empowerment and ensemble playing.

While Finlanders are usually modest about claiming accomplishments, a Vision 2030 publication starts with the statement, “Finnish music education is the best in the world.” Many agree. You might be interested in looking at this one-page summary of what the best music education nation envisions for its next ten years.

What do 17-year-olds actually do for fun? A new study from the Arts Council of Ireland details answers for their country—would the answers be the same for 17-year-olds in your country? Their top three “cultural activities” for several-times-a-week fun or relaxation were listening to music (87%), surfing the Internet (86%), and singing/playing a musical instrument (23%)—only one in six (14%) reads for pleasure several times a week.