It's been another busy few months for El Sistema Greece [ESG]. In the summer, they hosted the Lullaby Project for the second year in a row, the El Sistema Greece Youth Orchestra put on its first performance outside of Athens (in Thessaloniki) and the first-ever ESG School of Hip Hop was enthusiastically received.
In September, they then hosted the first ESG Music Seminar for teachers and trainers, they've recently launched an adult choir for homeless people and individuals from vulnerable groups (together with Greece's first street newspaper, Shedia) and, on top of all this, they've also been building bridges with our newest Sistema Europe member, Fondation EME.
An introduction to Fondation EME
Based in Luxembourg, Fondation EME is a varied and highly accomplished programme which can look back at ten years of success working on diverse music for social action projects for children, people with health conditions or impairments and the socially disadvantaged.
Watch clips from projects from the first decade of the Fondation EME
Curious about the El Sistema approach and wanting to enter into exchange with similarly-minded associations, Fondation EME joined Sistema Europe in October, having already come into contact with ESG on the occasion of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg [OPL]'s summer tour of Europe.
As the social arm of the Philharmonie Luxembourg and the OPL, the Fondation EME is a key part of the orchestra's activities and was the first port of call when El Sistema Greece's co-founder, Anis Barnat, asked if some of the OPL's musicians might have time to train with his students following their tour.
Fondation EME and a group of OPL musicians were enthusiastic to get involved and, before long, arrangements had been made and the Fondation EME team and the OPL's Irène Chatzisavas, Emmanuel Chaussade & Sébastien Grébille found themselves in ESG's headquarters in Kypseli for the first time on the morning after the OPL's tour finale in June.
A meteoric rise
And, the Fondation EME team will surely have been impressed by what they found on their arrival. Having seen remarkable growth since its foundation back in 2016, El Sistema Greece's headquarters in Kypseli now oversees ESG centres in Skaramagkas, Elaionas, Alimos and Moschato as well as managing involvement in additional cooperative projects with partner organisations such as the International Organisation of Migration.
From 2017-2018, ESG provided 1,331 hours of tuition in singing and string instruments across its centres, with this figure rising to 1,834 hours in 2018-2019. In total, the programme has now provided tuition to c. 1,500 different children and young adults and currently works with around 480 students in and around Athens.
An El Sistema Greece class in full flow
A positive impression
On their first visit, from the 18th-20th June, the Fondation EME team visited several of ESG's centres, attending classes in the Skaramagkas Refugee Camp, the Elaionas Refugee Camp and at ESG's headquarters in Kypseli, putting on performances, rehearsing with the students and holding workshops for string, woodwind and brass instruments.
The positive impact of the Fondation EME's efforts led ESG's co-founder, Anis Barnat, to speak of the importance of the motivational impact that the OPL musicians had on the students:
It's very important for us to have the musicians of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg here because it helps to boost these children and to give them inspiration, perhaps even an aspiration. So, ultimately, when the musicians leave, hopefully, for a week, we'll see the kids play music for 5-6 hours, because they will want to be like these musicians.
The trip also went down well with the Fondation EME team, with Director Dominque Hanson, who, concluding their June visit to Athens, had the following words to say:
The whole experience was good for the young people involved, for their teachers and for our musicians, who, on the one hand, have learnt about the El Sistema approach and can now use it in Luxembourg and, on the other hand, have been able to experience some exceptionally joyous moments here in the camp.
Indeed, the trip went so well that Fondation EME and El Sistema Greece subsequently came to an agreement to work together twice a year for the next three years. And, Fondation EME's second trip to Athens took place just two weeks ago, encompassing three days of attending and helping with orchestra rehearsals and putting on musical masterclasses at a number of different ESG centres.
A world apart
One ESG centre in particular made a big impact upon the Fondation EME team during both trips to Greece, with them spending time with pupils in the container village at the Skaramagkas Refugee Camp.
Watch Camille Crosnier's video of ESG in the Skaramagkas Refugee Camp
In an abandoned section of the old industrial harbour of Skaramagkas, some 5/6 kms from the furthest reaches of Athens' urban sprawl, the biggest refugee camp on the Greek mainland houses around 3,200 people in circa 430 containers. Initially meant to be a temporary measure, the camp has now been home to some refugees for three and a half years, with the vast majority of its inhabitants coming from the Middle East and Central Asia.
Left in limbo as their applications are processed, it would be easy for the people living here to despair, but, thankfully, there are institutions like El Sistema Greece which work hard to provide them with a sense of purpose.
Emmanuel Chaussade dances with pupils in Skaramagkas Refugee Camp
OPL Clarinetist Emmanuel Chaussade saw first hand the joy that ESG's work can inspire, as he ended his first visit to Skaramagkas dancing with pupils to the playing of his colleagues. And, he was quick to express his appreciation of the work that El Sistema Greece carries out in the camp, stating:
It's great to see that El Sistema Greece gives them [the kids] a sense of purpose in their complicated lives.
And, the appreciation of ESG's work is even greater amongst those who benefit from it on a daily basis, with Hazim, who has been learning the violin with El Sistema Greece, saying:
It has been a great experience with them [ESG], with amazing people from all over the world. It's just amazing, it feels amazing, it makes you pleased and if you have any tensions, anything during the week, then you just go and play with the orchestra and it feels amazing and makes you forget everything.
Each moment as important as the next
As both Anis Barnat and ESG Artistic Director José Ángel Salazar Marín emphasised in discussion with the Fondation EME team, the special circumstances in Skaramagkas and Elaionas require some adaptions to the learning environment, leading to a slightly more complex variant of the standard El Sistema approach.
As with all incorporations of Sistema, there is a clear focus on improving the auxiliary skills required to succeed at school and in society (such as self-discipline, teamwork, social responsibility and sustained concentration). In particular, however, there is an especial need to ensure that classes are not just fun and inspiring but also useful as individually exclusive units, as the teachers in the camps are eminently aware that their young charges may suddenly find themselves in another country at a moment's notice.
Therefore, in Skaramagkas and Elaionas, classes must fulfil the classical Sistema goals of being open to all (levels, abilities, cultures & backgrounds) and providing hope and aspiration while also being tailored to embrace a modular approach in which each session's content can be made use of in isolation. This ensures that the knowledge which is acquired in any given lesson is always self-sufficient and that the pupils are well-equipped to pick up where they have started off, should they suddenly find themselves in a new place, looking for a new Sistema.
Watch the video of Fondation EME's first trip to Athens in June
And, EL Sistema Greece's pupils are nothing if not motivated to succeed. The young viola and violin players, Abeer (from Iraq) and Alireza (from Iran), were, for example, keen to tell the Fondation EME team how they voluntarily practise for two hours a day and also spoke buoyantly of their love of playing, despite having had little to no experience of classical music as few as seven months ago.
Much to share
However, it isn't just the young musicians who are motivated by their teachers. Fondation EME's Dominque Hanson was also impressed by ESG's set-up and her experience of the exchange. Speaking to Luxembourg's radio 100,7 in Skaramagkas, she reaffirmed:
...That it [here] is exactly Fondation EME's mission: to bring music to people who don't always have access to it and, above all, the joy that the musicians bring.
In the same interview, Dominique Hanson also talked about the importance of the exchange of information amongst complementary music for social action projects, referencing the work that the Fondation EME has been carrying out with refugees in Luxembourg since 2015 and how this had helped inform their visit and how, conversely, they would take home new lessons learned from the ESG team.
One particularly important reference point was the Fondation EME's Bara Bara programme with Robert Bodja and the Lycée technique du Centre - Annexe Kirchberg, which has seen Fondation EME working with refugees from different backgrounds and cultures since 2017. In this programme, young refugees learn how to play the djembe
What's a djembe?
This is a djembe, get introduced to (or further immersed in) oriental music and learn how to express themselves through rhythm and dance, with each year culminating in a public concert in the Luxembourg Philharmonic.
Bara Bara students perform at their end of year concert
The Bara Bara programme is also exemplary for the culture of information exchange and learning at Fondation EME, with Robert Bodja himself just having returned from Bangladesh, where he led train-the-trainer sessions with teachers and social workers who aid disadvantaged communities in the Chars region of the country's northenmost reaches.
A resounding success and a positive example of international cooperation
Watch the video of Fondation EME's second trip to Athens in October
Clearly, both teams have a lot to offer and to learn from each other and their different approaches. And, while their partnership is still at an early stage, both the June & November trips appear to have been resounding successes, with the El Sistema Greece teacher, Francis Gagliardi, being just one of those involved to voice her enthusiasm for the exchange with the team from Luxembourg:
It's a wonderful experience because they have given everything to our kids and our kids feel this and recognise it, they really take advantage of every second they have to learn more and to improve their playing technique.
El Sistema Greece's artistic director, José Ángel Salazar Marín, was quick to back her up and to extrapolate on the lessons learned with a message to Sistemas across Europe and worldwide:
Musically, it has been an amazing improvement that has come hand-in-hand with the musicians from the Philharmonic Orchestra of Luxembourg...now that they have come and worked separately with the kids, they have [acquired] the tools to improve...
I think that those of us that work with the same goals of providing music and making music accessible should all work together in order to make this happen more often, not only here in Greece, but in other countries in Europe and all over the world.
We too hope to see more and more cooperative projects spring up between music for social action programmes and protagonists and are delighted that this is just the beginning of El Sistema Greece and Fondation EME's partnership. We, therefore, wish both teams all the very best going forwards and look forward to seeing more of the fruits of their labours in the months and years ahead.
Photos from Fondation EME's time in Athens
All photos c/o Sophie Delhaye & the Fondation EME team
Use the arrows to scan the gallery
Find out more about El Sistema Greece & Fondation EME
If this short introduction to just some of the great work that these two programmes carry out has made you want to find out more about their activities, then you can find more information on the programmes and keep up-to-date with all of their new events and projects via the following links:
El Sistema Greece
https://www.elsistema.gr/elsistema.gr
https://www.instagram.com/elsistemagreece/instagram.com/elsistemagreece
https://www.facebook.com/elsistemagreece/facebook.com/elsistemagreece
https://twitter.com/elsistemagreecetwitter.com/elsistemagreece
https://www.youtube.com/channel/elsistemagreeceyoutube.com/elsistemagreece
Fondation EME
http://www.fondation-eme.lu/en/fondation-eme.lu/en
https://www.facebook.com/fondationEME/facebook.com/fondationEME/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/FondationEMEyoutube.com/FondationEME