The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and Raploch Youth Music Project

Stirling, Scotland

The University of Stirling will be hosting an informative seminar on the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra project.  It is a project that aims to use an innovative methodology called ‘El Sistema’ to teach classical music to children from very early ages. The project has been going on for more than 30 years in Venezuela This fantastic orchestra is indeed the flagship of an education system which gives 250,000 young people the chance to learn an instrument, getting them away from drugs, guns and crime in the shanty towns. The talented musicians of the National System of Venezuelan Youth and Children's Orchestras are a source of national pride, like football stars in other Latin American countries.

The discussion panel will have Richard Holloway, Chair of the Scottish Arts Council, Gloria Carnevalli, Director of the Bolivar Hall of the Venezuelan Embassy in London, Nicola Killean director of the Project in Raploch Youth Music and Gavin Reid director of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

The panel and discussion will be followed by the screening of the award-wining documentary Tocar y Luchar (To play and to Fight), by the Venezuelan director Alberto Arvelo.

Sir Simon Rattle, director of the Berlin Philharmonic, said that the country's youth orchestras in Venezuela were doing the most important work in classical music anywhere in the world. Now Scotland is taking the lead, establishing a similar system in Raploch, Stirling. The project will start in 2008 and it promises to provide a groundbreaking programme of social inclusion.