Creative Europe
Desk UK
for Culture

El Sistema is a special music educational approach that started in Venezuela in 1975. It is based on the concept to offer and provide music
education free of charge to every child and young person, and to practise – from the start and on a regular (daily) basis – vocals, instruments
and dance in choirs, orchestras and dance groups to enhance and demand as well the individual talent of each child. In recent years, El
Sistema has inspired a large number of remarkable new initiatives all over Europe: It has proved to be an effective approach to set up new
opportunities of music education and to encourage the empowerment and the social inclusion of children and young people.
The objectives of the project are to
o enhance music education for children and young people
o utilise and develop the Sistema approach in Europe
o combine cultural and social objectives
o support best practice in music education and exchange experience
o prepare network structures at a truly European level
o cooperate with international (El) Sistema activities between Europe and overseas.
Led by the coordinator based in in AT, a consortium of 5 co-organisers from UK, IT, SK, BiH and Turkey and associated partners from 7 other
EU countries will demonstrate best practice in starting local ES programmes in different countries of SE Europe in implementing joint
programmes to qualify the music teachers according to the didactic requirements and prepare new structures for the European and
international exchange of experience. The selected local education programmes in Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Turkey address
target groups of children and young people and and promise to generate new experiences which will be very useful in other parts of Europe.
Therefore, the project will form a new work group of European experts to establish Sistema Europe. The project will improve the access of
children and youth to music and will present the results in public concerts.