ORPHEUS XXI – Music for life and dignity

Under the artistic management of Jordi Savall, an EU ambassador for inter-cultural dialogue, ORPHEUS XXI – Music for life and dignity is an artistic and educational action plan, designed as a replicable learning platform, for the integration of young refugees having musical knowledge or talent.

Valuing the presence in Europe of professional traditional refugee musicians, the project aims to train 20 refugee instrumentalists and signers who in turn intervene with children of all nationalities, internationally and locally.

Children are selected to form musical ensembles in view of a series of concerts to be held in schools, refugee communities and musical institutions in Europe. The good practices of this experimental model are used to establish a replicable programme of activities from 2018.

The project offers professional opportunities to young refugee musicians and enables refugee children to express themselves and communicate through music with people that do not speak their maternal language and have other cultural references. It also helps refugee children become aware that despite the wars and exiles they went through, music is a vector for understanding their past which will help them grow as citizens. It gives refugees an opportunity to rediscover the formal and traditional music of their own country, then share this as widely as possible with Europeans in order to offer the latter a chance to discover and understand the refugee population.

ICORN’s role in the ORPHEUS XXI project is to support and facilitate the organisation of the activities. Two ICORN musicians have been part of this project; Abazar Hamid and Hamid Sakhizada, both in residency in Harstad in Norway. They have participated in the training for professional musicians at the Saline Royale, and have formed groups of refugee children and youth in Harstad, to train an play concerts.

ICORN is also part of the project steering committee, and thus will take part in the decisions linked to the organisation of the activities and the project management. In this context, our main responsibilities within the project are: To communicate information on the project to ICORN members and partners. The network includes 70 cities, with local and international partners on the institutional and organisational levels, within the cultural, political and social sectors; to help disseminate the project results by facilitating contacts and communication with other European cities and organisations that will be interested in replicating the ORPHEUS XXI project; facilitate the search for opportunities to communicate the results (conferences and debates); help evaluate the project; support the propagation of this collaborative and intercultural work during a European tour.

The project starts on November, 1st  2016 and ends on October, 31st 2018.
Website : www.orpheus21.eu

The project “Orpheus XXI – Music for life and dignity” received the financial support of the European Commission as part of the Creative Europe Programme on 29 September 2016.