LEARNING MUSIC
Musical education is much more than just learning to play an instrument. It gives children and young people a chance to develop their imagination and creativity, two of the main skills needed for improving one's life: first to imagine that there is a better a life and then to create it. Learning music teaches people to work as a team, and helps children come out of some of the most difficult circumstances in their lives. As one of our music students in South America wrote: "Learning to play music has changed my life and that of people around me. Now I can see life differently." The voices of children and young people are rarely heard in the international and domestic dialogues. We believe that music education can be an opportunity for the young music learners, with the right content and guidance, to create the dialogue of the future, widening the educational opportunity not only to the musicians directly involved with this programme, but also to countless others they will be interacting with.
Serbia
Using our experience from similar projects in different parts of the world, Keys of Change would like to inspire the children and young people in Serbia facing hardships, and help them feel the sense of life changing recognition, achievement, collaboration and leadership, that can be offered through learning music and playing in a group.
Starting in 2017, our music programme in Serbia takes place at five children homes in and around Belgrade, in the form of group music lessons, focusing initially in the learning of choir singing and percussion instruments, which take place once a week. These musical activities aim to strengthen the self- confidence and personal identities of young people facing extraordinary situation in life, and will enable them to grow and face with hope, courage and confidence the challenges of their daily lives.
Sierra Leone
In 2013 Keys of Change supported a Children Wind Orchestra in Sierra Leone, organised by the Ballanta Academy of Music in Freetown. Keys of Change first came to Sierra Leone in April 2012, invited by the Ballanta Academy in Freetown to play piano recitals in amputee centres, women’s support group, prison, elderly home, school for blind children, local clinics and slum communities.
In 2010 instruments were donated to the Ballanta Academy to start a brass band for children made up of street children or otherwise disadvantaged kids. The project started with training on Saturdays but did not continue for lack of funding. With the help from Keys of Change the project started again.
Uganda
In the outskirts of Kampala, in the town called Nansana, is the Rainbow House, a centre run by Japanese organisation Ashinaga, that provides emotional and educational support to orphans who have lost one or both parents as a result of HIV/AIDS. Keys of Change first visited the Rainbow House in 2012. Between 2013-14 Keys of Change worked together with Ashinaga-Uganda to provide musical education to these orphans. The choice of instruments and genre was given to the students themselves, and they chose to learn traditional Ugandan music.