Brazil

When trying to renew an initiative that has existed for almost a decade, our great challenge is to find that precise balance between valuing tradition and proposing something new. At NEOJIBA State Nuclei for Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Bahia, this balance is fundamental to our continuous search for improvement—praising what already works, recognizing what can be improved, and having the tranquility to suggest something innovative without losing the essence of an idea.

It was in this spirit that in 2023, on a sunny afternoon during Bahia’s “eternal summer,” we began to redesign PROCEC, our collective teacher training program.

Post-Carnival, Brazil is showing no signs of slowing down in celebrating its rich musical and cultural diversity.

For over 27 years, the Brazilian nonprofit NGO Instituto Baccarelli has been supporting social work with children and young people in vulnerable situations in the favela of Heliópolis, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The Institute has a dramatic founding story: in 1996, after a massive fire devastated the favela, the esteemed choral director Maestro Silvio Baccarelli was moved to begin giving free violin lessons to children whose families had been displaced by the disaster. Shortly afterwards, the small string ensemble that originated the Baccarelli Institute was formed.

Morro da Providência, a vast hillside favela (slum) in Rio de Janeiro, is the oldest favela in Brazil. In 2011, over a hundred years after it was first occupied by unpaid war veterans and freed slaves, a group of local residents passionate about social change launched the Cultural Association Amigos da Providência. During the past decade, that association has developed into the Brazilian Institute of Music and Education (IBME), which pursues artistic, educational, and professional training projects for children, adolescents, and young people in the public school system.