13-04-2009
Music Fund in Madrid !
The Casa da Madrid and La Casa Encendida are preparing together with the concert organisor Musica d'Hoy a big collecting campaign for Music Fund which will take place in Madrid during the week of 14th December 2009. We expect this collecting campaign to be the biggest ever organised for Music Fund, as the organisation of it looks very professional indeed.
We already have the support of one of Spain's well-known artists, Jorge Drexler, who agreed to be Music Fund's ambassador for this campaign in Spain.
An article also just appeared about Music Fund in El Pais (click here), written by one of its star-journalists, Jesus Ruis Mantilla. Jesus is joining me for a short trip of several days to the Middle East in the beginning of June to get acquainted with all the partner-school of Music Fund in Nazareth, Nablus, Ramallah and Gaza, and is planning to write several articles about our work there, following this trip.
"3rdPARTY" is starting in September
I am really happy to hear that thanks to financial support from the Province of Antwerp, the private project "3rdPARTY" (a 3-year project around Palestinian and Israeli peace-activists) can be started in Antwerp from this Autumn on.
It is a private initiative which I am taking together with Rik Coolsaet, Karin Heremans and Mohammed Filali.
"3rdPARTY" (in Dutch: "3dePARTIJ") is a 3-year programme in 3 parts:
1. every 2 months a meeting with peace activists from Israel and Palestine: during 3 days they will meet in the city of Antwerp with schools, associations and finally also in public at one of the 2 theatres (Toneelhuis / Monty), to share their hopes, aspirations and difficulties. a well-read Flemish magazine will each time cover these meetings (5 per year, 15 in 3 years).
2. from the Summer of 2010 on, we will organise 3 years in a row a 10-day trip to Israel and Palestine for a group of about 10 youngsters who just finished highschool (18-20 year olds).
3. we will create a fund to give support to peace activists' projects in the Middle East.
This private initiative wants to show that there are some very curageous people working for peace, against all odds and against the opinion of many around them, and that we as "third party" - outside of the conflict region - can be of help by making friends with them, presenting their work and giving support to some of their projects.
As soon as we get firm confirmation about the budgets, the peace activists invited from September on will soon be contacted and the full programme of this initiative announced here and elsewhere.
see also: http://3rdparty.canalblog.com
01-04-2009
an article in El Pais
today an article was published in El Pais (click to read the article) on the projects of Music Fund in the Middle East and Africa. and the journalist of this article, Jesus Ruiz Mantilla, is spending 4 days with me in Israel and Palestine in the beginning of June. he is planning to write more later on.
