Brazilian Music Educators Return to North East for Second Visit Sage Gateshead Shares Expertise and Experience in Exchange Programme

(Press Release.)

A group of Brazilian music and education professionals are spending time with Sage Gateshead, schools and community groups from around the North East to share expertise and experience, as part of a unique, music education exchange programme.

The team of 10 Brazilian musicians and educators from Santa Marcelina Cultura (SMC) are returning to the region a year after their first visit, to take part in a 10-day programme sharing music ideas and experiences with their opposite numbers at Sage Gateshead. The visit, from May 12-25, follows Sage Gateshead’s Learning & Participation team’s trip to Brazil in  October last year, where the North East group learned how SMC uses inclusion and excellence in music education in its work with around 13,000 young people in São Paulo.

SMC, a social organisation set up by the state government, brings together specialists in music, community and arts education and social pedagogy (instructional theory), who use music to access and include often deprived groups. The team, here to share their knowledge in the North East, is made up of performers who also work in schools and the community.

The exchange programme was created after Katherine Zeserson, Sage Gateshead’s Director of Learning & Participation, met SMC leaders at the International Society for the Performing Arts conference in Brazil five years ago.

Katherine said: “We are thrilled to welcome our Brazilian colleagues to Sage Gateshead for their second of three annual visits. They bring us fresh energy and ideas and I know that they find our programme inspiring and stimulating in equal measure.

“We can learn a great deal from each other in support of our common purpose – harnessing the great power of music to bring about positive transformations in young people’s lives.”

Music-making seminars and workshops, at Sage Gateshead and other venues across the region, will be combined with visits to schools where Sage Gateshead staff already conduct regular music sessions. At the heart of the visit will be sessions where the Brazilian team can see how Sage Gateshead educators use music to help young people tackle issues of exclusion and crime in deprived areas. The programme will bring in all age groups and abilities from accessible learning with adults in the community to pre-school children.

The SMC exchange team will also visit Northumberland, Sunderland, Durham and Teesside. This will include sessions with primary school children and the Durham FIZZ project for young people who have suffered emotional abuse and other difficulties, who attend musical sessions aiming to increase their confidence and self-esteem.

The SMC group will also have the opportunity to experience some of the region’s culture, including the Hexham Gathering on May 24, attend a ceilidh, visit Tynemouth market and the Late Shows, and travel to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

Funded by the British Council through the TRANSFORM programme, the exchange programme benefits the educators from both countries, who learn new ways of using the transformational power of music, and those they work with. Brazil is recognised internationally as a leader in inclusion and excellence in music education, particularly for young people in challenging circumstances, and Sage Gateshead is one of the top music education practitioners in the UK and beyond.