21-08-2008
music school in Gaza !
One of our partners in Palestine, the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation, is now all set to start a music school in Gaza, of all places !
They have engaged a coordinator for the school, Mr Ibrahim Al-Najjar, last July. Then they rented spaces in the building of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which they have been refurbishing the last weeks. The selection of teachers and students is now being made, in collaboration with the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music. In the second half of September music theory courses are started and in the beginning of October the full programme will be in place: they are starting with a 'humble' programme - as Ziad Khalaf of Qattan calls it himself - proposing teaching around 5 different instruments: oud, guitar, violin and keyboard/piano, and kanoun. Not bad at all as a start! In the beginning a selection of only 5 students will be accepted per instrument.
© the building of the A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation in Gaza: the Qattan Centre for the Child
The partnership between A.M. Al-Qattan Foundation and Music Fund - which has been made possible thanks to the support of the Belgian Government (via the Belgian Consulate and the Belgian Technical Cooperation in Jerusalem) and the Province of Antwerp (Belgium) - will the coming years be focussed on providing music instruments to the school, so that students will soon be able to borrow music instruments which they can take home to study.
Furthermore, Music Fund will immediately start a training programme for instrument technicians in Gaza, so that soon some persons in Gaza will be able to do basic reparations to the instruments.
Together with our partner in Nablus, Nablus the Culture, Music Fund will the coming months try to buy pianos in the region and have them repaired by our expert in Nablus, Olivier Marie, and his students, before then sending them to Gaza to the music school which Qattan Foundation is opening. This also is a wonderful new opportunity for us to spend money locally and have partners locally to help us find and repair instruments which are needed in Gaza. We have done this before and found a number of pianos which were 'sleeping' in storage-houses or private homes, collecting dust as pieces of furniture because no piano technicians are available in the Westbank to take care of the instruments.
Our first 'mission' with instrument experts from Belgium - who will be giving an initiation-course of one week and repairing instruments during that same period - will be sent already in the end of October (between 30.10 and 9.11.08). I will write about this project more in detail the coming weeks.
© this beautiful accordeon was donated to Qattan in Gaza in February 2008
© one of the pianos being brought into the training centre for piano repair and tuning at Nablus the Culture
© our piano-expert Olivier Marie who is working for a full year at Nablus the Culture to teach piano repair and tuning to a selected group of five Palestinian students; Olivier Marie will be coming with us to Gaza in October to repair and teach repair techniques there as well.
18-08-2008
special private gifts to Music Fund
It happens more and more that people propose us special gifts. Recently, we had the following such propositions:
More and more people - young and old - propose to their friends and family that, instead of receiving presents for their personal birthday or for their wedding or any other anniversary, they would prefer to receive a financial gift which they then collect and transfer to the account of Music Fund. Such gifts are sometimes intended in specific support of one of our projects in the Middle East or in Congo or Mozambique, but not always so.
Receiving such donations is really impressive. It gives me the feeling that we are really onto something, as it touches a sensitive cord and opens people's imagination towards realities which are far away from them. It gives us courage to do what we do and to succeed our projects.
13-08-2008
Summertime: fetching donated pianos in and around Belgium
I am finally enjoying some time in Belgium, combining office-work for Ictus and Music Fund with staying with my family. It feels great for someone like myself who travels so much throughout the year.
Olivier Marie spent several weeks in Europe in order to sort out his papers, sign his contract with Music Fund and to order material and tools for his training programme in Nablus. He went back last week and can be followed on his blog. Olivier helped me to fetch some pianos which people from Brussels and Paris donated to Music Fund. We travelled together, using Pol De Winter's marvelous trailer to transport these instruments. Here is a real image as well as a computer-styled picture of the trailer we used the last weeks. The computer-image shows the trailer as we would like it to look after being refurbished by our communication agent, Air:
as it looks now,... great already, no?
and how it would look if we could find a sponsor to pay for the refurbishing we have in mind... it would surely be nice publicity for Music Fund...
In a few weeks I will be travelling with this trailer to Innsbruck (Tirol, Austria) where the festival Klangspuren is collecting music instruments for Music Fund and also on 14th September presenting the film "The Exchange" (see extract here) which Marc Temmerman and Fred Demolder made around the projects of Music Fund in the Middle East.
Other festivals are also considering or have decided to also collect music instruments for Music Fund: Wien Modern in Vienna (Austria), Huddersfield Festival (UK, on 24th November) and Helsinki Festival (Finland). It looks like Pol's trailer will be seeing more of Europe the coming months.
02-08-2008
Kinshasa-blog Pierre Helou
Pierre Helou, the wind instrument luthier who was with Music Fund in Kinshasa, also created his own weblog on his experiences in Kinshasa. It can be found here (click).
