Purpose: The Creative Orchestra is a community project that aims to bring forward the social dimension of music, promoting inclusion through music.
Stimulus/Rationale: Casa dos Choupos is the local partner in charge of leading this programme. Its mission is to involve the educational community and fringes of the population facing most disadvantage in diversified experiences, with the Creative Orchestra being the face of this purpose, a model of social inclusion through art, by the fact that it integrates the realisation of people with limited or non-existent access in enriching musical experiences. The orchestra is accessible for all, regardless of one’s musical experience, age or social/cultural background. Based on pluralism and the mixing of different arts, lives and concepts, the orchestra encourages innovation and creation of alternative ways of making music, while deconstructing the conventional ways. It is a project where differences are valued and required, where various social groups unite, collaborate and create together.
Process:
In essence, the Creative Orchestra is a community-based project, led by children, young people, people with disabilities and seniors, aged between 8 and 80 years, from different parishes in the municipality of Santa Maria da Feira – a living proof that each one can contribute in their own way to the process of creating music. With great musical and visual diversity, the Creative Orchestra combines the use of instruments produced from recycled materials in parallel with conventional musical instruments. Pipes from electrical installations, road sign poles, bottles, drums and buckets, take the stage along with cellos, violins, guitars, clarinets and horns. Objectives:
Activities:
The Creative Orchestra involves the involvement of a diverse range of people and entities in sharing the project through periodic meetings with teachers, parents, students, institutions and associations. Each year, the theme or story on which the musical laboratories are oriented is defined, and from which the original songs and repertoires result. The rehearsals take place in different spaces: schools, institutions, neighbourhoods and associations, every two weeks, and the schedules are established according to the participants, with the conductor travelling to the different parishes. Monthly, on Sundays, there is a general rehearsal with all the groups (children, young people, adults and seniors), in the space where the project's headquarters operates. During the Easter holidays, an internship is promoted for children and young people, including an instrument building workshop and a musical creation workshop. At the same time, a course for musical animators is promoted open to people who play a musical instrument and who use music in their work context, providing them with the experience of being part of the orchestra's collective. After the creation of the songs by the children, young people and adults, they are translated into musical scores and delivered to the musicians. But, the creative process doesn't end there. Each group continues to influence the final result in its own way, interpreting the scores in a particular way or suggesting ideas for the arrangement of the songs. All stages of creation are shared by all. Even in public performances, concerts are always creative acts and, not mere repetition, each performance is different from the previous ones. The involvement of external groups in the preparation of the shows is part of this methodology, providing interdisciplinary intersection and the sharing of artistic experiences, which are extremely important for the participants of the orchestra. The shows leave the traditional conception of concert to become moments of musical enjoyment well participated, making the stage a great party!
Impact: Currently 90 people are part of this orchestra, among them children, seniors, people with disabilities (between 8 and 80 years old). In the eight years of its activity, about ten thousand people of all ages and social and economic contexts have passed through the Orchestra directly or occasionally. For this reason, the Creative Orchestra presents itself as a good practice in the area of social inclusion and education through art carried out by the municipality and by the entire local community involved.
In the contemporary art panorama, the Creative Orchestra stands out as an innovative and different experience, being one of the few orchestras that has no limit to people's participation. This musical project allowed the development of an educational and artistic process with great social reach, whose intention is to make Music accessible to All. On the other hand, he achieves results of high artistic quality thanks to a creative method based on simple sensitivity and experience, which allows an organic construction of the music, not only in its compositional phase, but also in its performative phase. Making the stage a proof of plurality, which crosses arts, lives and concepts, where social groups with different realities, amateur and professional musicians fit in an artistic and community project that refers to innovative performative universes, and shows that combine with other arts. In its continuous changes, some elements are constant: the reference to popular songs and the spirit and practice of permanent experimentation.
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