Session Information
04 SES 02 A, The Role of Music and Maths in Inclusion or Segregation.
Paper Session
Contribution
El Sistema (which translates as ‘The System’) has achieved a very high profile because of its innovative aims of achieving social equality for young Venezeulans from disadvantaged backgrounds through the agency of orchestral training and has been successfully implemented across the country for the past 30 years, with 180 orchestral centres serving 350,000 children in Venezuela. This combination of high musical excellence, entirely driven by an ethos of social equality and participation in a context that includes significant deprivation, has generated considerable excitement and Lieberman (2009) suggests it is starting to inspire a global movement of using orchestral music to break the cycle of poverty; the conductor Sir Simon Rattle has proclaimed, ‘there is no more important work that is being done in music now than is being done in Venezuela.’ (www.fanfaire.com/Dudamel/advocates.html). The Venezeulan programme has been brought to one of Scotland’s most deprived areas, the Raploch Estate in Stirling and the first European ‘outreach’ location of El Sistema has been established with support from some key organisations, including the BBC Scotland, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Drake Music (an organisation which facilitates the participation of disabled people in music) and Stirling Council, the local authority.
The paper, which is directly relevant to the conference theme of Education and Cultural Change, outlines the development of Sistema Scotland and the programme, El Sistema, on which it is based. It also reports on a knowledge exchange project involving Sistema Scotland, funded by the Scottish Funding Council and with the aim of improving the ‘two-way flow of people and ideas between the research environment and wider economy, thereby contributing to national prosperity, the quality of life of citizens, and cultural enrichment of our society’ (Scottish Funding Council, n.d).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Derrida, J. 1993. Aporias. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lieberman, T. 2009. Classical music as an agent for social change: Documenting an emerging movement. Unpublished report. University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Scottish Funding Council. no date. Knowledge exchange: How does SFC help Scotland’s colleges and universities exchange knowledge? Retrieved on 9 June 2009, from: http://www.sfc.ac.uk/publications/sfc_leaflet_series/downloads/SFC_HelpKnowledge.pdf
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