Youth Orchestra Recanto Maestro (Orquestra Jovem Recanto Maestro) of Fundação Antonio Meneghetti

#SDGAction42940

Description

Intro

Youth Orchestra Recanto Maestro is a project focused in teaching classical music for young students from 4 years old until 21 years old from the network of public schools of seven cities located in the countryside region of the Southmost state of Brazil. This region is named Fourth Colony of Italian Immigration of Rio Grande do Sul and it has never received a project of classical music education before this initiative. Beyond the fostering of the students abilities in instruments such as violin, viola, violoncelo, bass, percussion, trombone, trumpet, oboe, among others.

Objective of the practice

According to the transformative spirit of the 2030 Agenda, this project aims to help different SDGs, specially, SDG 4. Through music classes, students are also learning about self esteem, working in group, respect for differences, and about cultural heritage of our country. That is done by offering free musical classes for children of the public network of schools of seven cities (São João do Polêsine; Agudo; Restinga Sêca; Dona Francisca; Candelária; Paraíso do Sul; and Santa Maria). The music classes are offered in the school counter-shift of the students. In the first year of the project, one difficult faced was the lack of knowledge of the community and specially the children regarding classical music classes. The solution was found through a strategy of divulgation of the project. The classes are offered every semester in divulgations promoted for all the schools indicated by the town house of each city. In this divulgation, the children watch a classical music concert played by the Orchestra teachers. After that, the students who want to be part of the Orchestra raise their hands and receive a printed invitation that shall be taken to their parents. After that, the parents come to a meeting with the Orchestra teachers and make the oficial registration of the students. Another challenge faced was the high costs involved in taking all the students by bus to have three classes a week in the Orchestra headquarters (located in one of the seven cities mentioned above). This challenge was faced by making a partnership with the town hall of every city that receives the Orchestra and requesting from them the use of one or more rooms of the public structure of the city in order to offer two classes a week in the city where the children live. Once a week, all the children are taken to the headquarters of the Orchestra in order to rehearse with the entire group of the Orchestra, that comes from seven different cities. Through means of working together with children from different cities, the students of Youth Orchestra Recanto Maestro learn how to respect different cultures and different families from diverse economic backgrounds. Also it was important to develop parallel skills in the young participants of the project in order to have them respecting the long hours of rehearse that are necessary to the preparation of a concert. First of all, the musical director of the Orchestra is an important Brazilian composer, who prepared new compositions specially for the learning of young children (they start to play their first complete music in one month); also, the students have classes about how to work in group, music history, responsibility and entrepreneurship. The method for teaching this concepts is based on the ontopsychological pedagogy, a line of teaching which is developed by Foundation Antonio Meneghetti in all the 23 social and educational projects that if offers to the community.

Partners

Town halls offer classrooms for classes of the Orchestra. Institution of higher education Antonio Meneghetti Faculdade offer free entrepreneurship classes as complementary curriculum for Orchestra students. Program of sponsorship "Godfathers and Friends of the Youth Orchestra” allows individuals and companies to support the project. Federal government of Brazil is a key partner, because it has approved the project of through means of its Law for Incentive of Culture, so that it can receive sponsorship of big companies that may discount this value from their income tax.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

The entrance of students in the project is kept every semester as described in the answer above. After entering the orchestra, the student will have two classes per week in his home town in a space offered by the town house during the opposite shift of his school time. Once a week, every saturday, he will have classes in the headquarters of the Orchestra, which is located in the city of São João do Polêsine. In this day, all the students of the two main groups of the Orchestra meet to rehearsal together. The students in the initial phase, have only classes at their home town. Once they get to be approved the to Children´s Orchestra or to the group named Youth Orchestra, they will begin to have classes every saturday. To come to these classes, the project offer the students free transportation and also lunch and snacks. During the school vacation, the most advanced students are invited to a ten day intensive period where they come to stay at the university campus and have a program of different music classes, including international teachers that come as invited teachers from countries such as Venezuela, France and USA. This teachers are, many times, the first foreign person that the students have ever met. Through all year, students participant on concerts open to the community with different repertoire, from classical to modern composers, passing also through popular music from Latin America. The project works from January to December. In order to teach these young children 12 teachers are available. Among them, the Orchestra counts with two teachers that used to work on the project Fundación Musical Simón Bolívar (El Sistema). These students of the Youth Orchestra also count with classes of entrepreneurship taught by lecturers of the university Antonio Meneghetti Faculdade (www.faculdadeam.edu.br), partner entity of the project. All the instruments used by the students are from the project. Once the student begins to have autonomy to play the instrument, he can take it home and stay with it as long as this student is part of the Orchestra. This measure has proven to develop responsibility on the students.

Results/Outputs/Impacts

More than 500 children have already passed through the classes of the Youth Orchestra Recanto Maestro. Many results are observed in this students. The goal is not to make them professional musicians, but to offer them an option of activity connected to Arts, Culture, Civility, Sustainability. For some of our former students, Music has become a job, or an option for their Higher Education. For all of them, the project is the place where they develop self esteem; responsibility; creativity; sense of a globalized world; taste for music; respect for different cultures. For some children that come from families with deeper economical difficulties, the project is also a place that provides food and clothes (uniformes) for the children, which are very appreciated. Many of the children in the project come from violent backgrounds and the Education Secretariat of different municipalities have reported that those children have shown an increment in their self esteem and capability to overcome the difficulties of their pass. The families of these students are also very close to the project, and classical music has become a part of their lives as well. The Orchestra also offers courses with Pedagogy professionals targeted to the parents, in order that they can help students to develop discipline and responsibility with the orchestra, and, through that, with all their activities. It is interesting to observe that different benefits are reported by the parents of the students and by the teachers that participate of their curricular education. They report that the students which are part of the project of the Orchestra become more calm; profound; respectful; happy; responsible and friendly. Also, creativity and intelligence are stimulated. For the community, a broad program of free concerts of classical music is now offered all through the year, which has never happened before in this area of the countryside of Brazil. Also for the foundation that keeps this project, the results have been very broad. The foundation has in its term of foundation the ideal to support the goals of the United Nations, so, we believe that this is being achieved through this project.

Enabling factors and constraints

Beyond the specifications mentioned in the other topics, some conditions helped the project to overcome its difficulties. The participation of a board of directors which is composed by a businessman which has a great love for music (Director General, Mr. Claudio Carrara); by a composer which is one of the most known composers of Brazilian classical music nowadays (Musical Director, Mr. Vagner Cunha); by a Maestro which is one of the most recognized and has a solid career both as a teacher of universities of Music as a Maestro (Pedagogical Director, Maestro Antonio Borges-Cunha); one of the initiators of the project Fundacion Musical Simon Bolivas, El Sistema from Venezuela, (Director of Children Orchestra, Maestro Julian Ramos); and a coordinator that has international experience as music teacher in different projects of Latin America (General Coordinator, Michael Penna). The project has overcome different difficulties. One of the most important one was to keep the students interested in learning the difficult ways of classical music without having never seen this content before. That was overcome through means of a method of teaching which offers music specially written for children by Vagner Cunha, or, new orchestration for children of classical compositions. Also, the financial resources are a major challenge. As said, the Law of Incentive of Culture of Brazil has been very important in helping overcome that difficulty as well as the support of Fundação Antonio Meneghetti. Another condition that helped the project was the inclusion of classes regarding entrepreneurship and development of the instinct of responsibility for the group. This classes gave a sense of meritocracy to the students and created a strong group, able to overcome big challenges and difficult repertoires together.

Sustainability and replicability

Regarding sustainability, the project is develop inside a project of sustainable conservation of the environment. The district Recanto Maestro (www.recantomaestro.com.br) is an area of florestal recovery which nowadays constitutes the campus of the university Antonio Meneghetti Faculdade. Having contact with a beautiful landscape with very strong natural area, the students of the Youth Orchestra also learn how to respect the environment. It is important to notice that Fundação Antonio Meneghetti, the entity that promotes this project is an NGO in special consultative status with the ECOSOC of the United Nations since 2018.
The resilience and economic sustainability of the project may be verified by the many challenges faced until nowadays as might be seen by the other topics of this questionnaire.
The benefits of the project are immeasurable in many senses. It is the general feeling of the board of directors and all the team of teachers and monitors, that all the costs involved on this practice are more than worthy to help the children and youth of our region and, by acting locally, also help globally.
In terms of plans to extend the practice more widely, the Musical Director of the Orchestra is producing, this year, a printed copy of his compositions made specially for children learning violin. After ready, this method will be offered to other youth orchestras taking the knowledge of this practice to a broader sphere. Also, it will be produced publications of methods for other instruments will have printed books of the methods used in the Youth Orchestra to teach them.

Conclusions

We believe that beyond the success reached until now by the project Youth Orchestra Recanto Maestro some key messages are present. The belief in the will and capacity of the young people to choose to learn music and to become responsible for this choice is a very strong one. Also the respect for the projects already working in the world and the will to learn with professionals of different musical social projects is very important and takes us to bring them to our headquarters or to visit their project. Being a project that believes in the importance of Art and Beauty for the development of a more humanistic culture where the children of the region will grow. Allowing people from the most diverse economical backgrounds to have access to classes of classical music. Offering also, of course, a knowledge that might become a profession to some of those students is important. Having the families as partners of the project is also essential. The use of the ontopsychological pedagogy as one of the bases for teaching entrepreneurship as complementary knowledge for the students has been very effecitve as well. Finally, fostering the taste for classical music in the community has been a continuous aspect taken ahead by the Youth Orchestra Recanto Maestro.

Other sources of information

www.ojrm.com.br
facebook.com.br/orquestrajovemrecantomaestro
Residência Musical de Verão 2017 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpTq20IebAI
Residência Musical de Inverno 2017 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhO4YDjRC-Q
Example of Concert 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IryiwNepaW0
Example of Concert 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUNo-qqjbDI
Example of Concert 3 - https://vimeo.com/304354579
Example of Concert 4 - https://vimeo.com/226794065

SDGS & Targets