Today we present to you Oliver Marie from MusicFund. An organisation that VintageandRare.com supports and admires.

Music Fund and VintageandRare.com hope to interest amateurs of vintage instruments to give support to Music Fund’s efforts to train instrument repair technicians in Africa and the Middle East, by donating money to Music Fund for this.  Furthermore, there is the possibility via MusicFund to buy guitars made locally and in poor conditions by Congolese guitar-makers.  And last but not least, Music Fund is looking for good quality guitars to donate to the music schools of Haiti.  If you have a guitar which is in good condition and want to donate it via Music Fund, please send it to Music Fund in Brussels. “Music is an instrument of development.”

Music Fund (MF) develops partnerships with music schools in developing countries and conflict areas, specifically the Middle East (Palestine: Gaza, Ramallah, Nablus; Israel: Nazareth, Jerusalem); Mozambique (Maputo), and the DRC (Kinshasa). It focuses on the music instrument (donations, training in repair techniques, and creation of repair workshops for music instruments).

MF collects music instruments all over Europe, inspects and repairs them, and then donates them to its partner schools.  However, most of its investment is in the creation and management of local repair workshops within its partner schools, and in the organisation of training programmes in instrument repair. This methodology allows the music instruments donated by MF to be maintained in good condition by the partners themselves, independently from Music Fund. Since the creation of MF in 2004-2005, thousands of music instruments have been collected and transferred to the Middle East and Africa.

In Europe, MF is backed by a broad group of concert organisers and media. It also has the support of a wide variety of volunteers. The steering committee includes representatives from the cultural sector as well as the economic and political world.

In the Middle East and Africa, MF works with well-established music schools that need music instruments and technicians to maintain them. The partnerships with these schools are established for periods of three years, renewable normally two times, and a maximum of three times.

MF understands that music education and music playing alone do not prevent conflict or promote economic development. However, MF’s experience – in Congo, the Middle-East and Mozambique – is that music plays a very important role in building a society whose attention is directed towards culture, and thus away from the misery of war and poverty.

For example, music plays an important role in Congolese society. Music is omnipresent in Kinshasa, to help to soothe the pains of the war and at funerals, but also to celebrate weddings and births. Music has survived the conflicts in this country. The capacity is large: there are talented musicians and orchestras everywhere. There are needs for music instruments in good condition, instrument restorers to keep them in good condition, and music schools with sufficient means to educate young people in music.

In Palestine and in Israel MF has been able to measure the impact of music on young people. During the more violent periods of the Intifada, they came to learn music, to play chamber music, even as the shooting continued. These young people have refused to accept the inevitability of violence and conflict.

The goal of Music Fund’s activities is empowerment. MF seeks to move away from ‘aid’ towards development of capacity building and wealth creation. Its programmes take an holistic approach: MF not only supplies music instruments to its partner schools, but also takes initiatives for the transfer of the expertise needed to tune and repair them via training programmes and the creation of repair workshops in the partner schools.

Although it is satisfying and useful to organise the transfer and donations of music instruments from Europe to music schools in the Middle East and Africa, Music Fund since its creation in 2004-2005 has given priority to those aspects of its projects that enable empowerment and independence of its partners. Music Fund seeks to achieve this goal through: (1) training of technicians, and (2) the creation of repair workshops in the music schools.

• (1) Training programmes teach teachers and students of the partner schools the basic repair techniques of music instruments.  The most talented students are invited to train as professional repair technicians in workshops and schools in Europe. After finishing these training programmes, the technicians are employed in the repair workshops in the partner schools.

• (2) Four repair workshops have been opened in the partner schools in Ramallah, Nablus, Maputo and Kinshasa.  MF is responsible for their start-up and provides tools and parts to allow these workshops to start repairing music instruments.  These workshops not only provide employment for young repair technicians; they also generate income for the schools, as musicians from outside the music schools have their music instruments repaired there for a fee.

This combined methodology (opening workshops and training technicians) allows the partner schools to maintain their own musical instruments in good order independently from Music Fund. It also provides income and employment opportunities in and around the music schools. Music Fund spends as much as it can locally (buying instruments, tools, commodities, paying salaries, etc.), so that local people profit as much as possible from Music Fund’s expenditures.

Trade not aid: the overall aim is to shorten the aid-driven interventions and allow the partner schools as quickly as possible to become independent from Music Fund, both financially as well as in terms of possessing quality music instruments and repair tools and the skills to use them.

To what extent are the candidate’s initiatives innovative, in terms of focus area or methodology? Do these activities have the potential to be reproduced elsewhere in the world?

Music Fund understands ‘solidarity’ as a contractual relationship. One of Music Fund’s central concerns is the development of contractual relationships with its partners.

Music Fund works within the music niche of society and with a limited number of partner schools. Music Fund has made a conscious choice to focus its activity in terms of the type of interventions (music instruments, via donations and repair) as well as in terms of a limited number of partners.  This focus allows MF to deepen its involvement on basis of long-term relations that are direct, personal and durable.

Music Fund’s projects are concrete, clearly focused and limited in terms of timing and locations. For these reasons, they have a real impact on people’s lives. The activities are directed towards job and wealth creation. Because music, in general, and Music Fund’s projects, in particular, draw a lot of public and media attention. Music Fund has an important exemplary function: if Music Fund can do it, other organisations can do it as well in other fields.  Music Fund’s methodology is to develop programmes that are a format or template that can be implemented in other sectors of society.

Music Fund is innovative in giving importance to the role of music, in particular, and culture, in general, as instruments for development, It brings together expertise from the world of development workers and NGOs with expertise from the world of the arts – music ensembles and music presenters from all over Europe – in projects for development of poor and/or conflict stricken regions.  Culture and development is a small, but growing, sector in which Music Fund in a few years time has become a well-known and internationally respected pioneer, drawing enthusiasm and support for its actions, focus and perseverance.

Oliver Marie

MusicFund

 

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