In the footsteps of Venezuela's hugely successful music programme El Sistema, which has turned some of the country's most underprivileged children into top classical musicians, Scotland is launching its own children's orchestral project in the deprived Raploch estate in Stirling.
As England considers its own version of the life-changing scheme, the Music Manifesto caught up with Sistema Scotland director Nicola Killean (left) to find out how things are progressing north of the border.
MM: Tell us where you're up to with the Sistema Scotland project.
NK: We're at a really interesting and exciting phase because right now we're moving into the final preparation for implementation. It's been a twofold approach of understanding exactly what El Sistema is and what makes it work in Venezuela, and then in looking at which of those elements are absolutely essential, and how we can best make this fit into the structures that are already in place in Scotland. That was our phase one stage and now we're in phase two. We know how we're going to approach this, we're recruiting for musicians, we're almost ready to start.
What are those essential elements in the Venezuelan system?
In Venezuela, El Sistema is an immersion technique, the children are there so regularly it creates an alternate life for them where they can find father figures, brothers and sisters; the orchestra becomes their community. There is really strong leadership all the way through the system. Maestro Abreu [El Sistema's founder] is still driving this one hundred per cent, but at each orchestra centre there's a director who drives the centre, the teachers are inspirational leaders, and peer learning is encouraged too. Then there's making it accessible, which means a lot of different things - it is free, instruments are free and sometimes there's transport to actually get them there.
How far do you think you can take the immersion idea in Scotland?
For our children's orchestras programme there are different layers. For the core programme we're trying to work with children three days a week, after school for about two and a half hours each day. If we can, maybe we can also extend that, so they can come on Saturday morning for example.
What if the children couldn't commit to all those sessions?
These are questions we're going to answer along the way. We want to encourage children and enable them to come those three sessions. But some of the children have complex lives. Some of them may not be able to commit to that and we want to be flexible, we want to put up as few barriers as possible.
What has the response been like in Raploch?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive so far. We're targeting young children and we're really trying to grow an orchestra, so we're looking at primary 1-4, that's five- to eight-year-olds. We're recruiting musicians in May but starting the programme at the end of June, so those two months are really about the musicians going out and about meeting the children and meeting families, promoting the message that it's going to be fun and it's for everyone.
How will the programme work?
We're at the point now where we're starting to structure the programme, but also allowing space for musicians that we recruit to bring their own ideas. So we're trying to let that grow organically. In Venezuela they're proud to say we use the best bits of all the methodologies, so we take some Suzuki, we take some Dalcroze and we take all these different elements to get the best result. It's a whole musicianship programme which centres round the orchestra. We want to get the children into a string orchestra as quickly as possible, but they will also be involved in choral work and have general musicianship training.
How long will it run for?
We're confident that we'll be able to run for a year but what we absolutely want is for this to be a long-term programme, a generational programme. So we're working towards that.
How much of a result do you think you could see within a year?
As part of our research we were talking to as many people we could find who'd been involved in the system. I've had the pleasure of having conversations with Venezuelans who've only been involved with the project for six months or a year and they're absolutely positive about the impact that it can have.
What will that impact be?
The aim is the holistic development of the child through the orchestra. Some people look at Venezuela and say this is an absolutely wonderful music education programme, and some people look at it is an absolutely wonderful social programme. We've come to the conclusion that those two things are totally intertwined and you can't separate them.
Is the focus on classical music a key part of the system?
We think it is, and it's been so successful in Venezuela we're going to start there. We're using the orchestra as a tool to learn. If, down the line, the children want to include other music in that I think we'd be open to possibilities. It's not so much about focusing on classical music, it's about the size and complexity of the orchestra, where there can be a place for everyone and everyone's got to contribute to an ultimate goal.
There's a wonderful quote from Maestro Abreu where he says, 'What is an orchestra? An orchestra is a community where the essential and exclusive feature is that it is the only community that comes together with the fundamental objective of agreeing with itself.'