DAVID CUFFY

Res­i­dents of four ju­ve­nile cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties will now have the ben­e­fit of for­mal mu­sic train­ing through the Mu­sic Schools in the Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lab­o­ra­tive Project, launched by Min­is­ter of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas at the St Mary's Chil­dren's Home in Tacarigua on May 3.

"This pro­gramme is all about em­pow­er­ment," said Dou­glas. "It is about giv­ing young peo­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­gage in mu­sic learn­ing ac­tiv­i­ties for de­vel­op­ment–to fine-tune every drop of la­tent tal­ent, to un­der­stand, ex­press and ap­pre­ci­ate mu­sic of var­i­ous cul­tures."

In ad­di­tion to the St Mary's Chil­dren's Home, oth­er ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the pro­gramme in­clude St Michael Home for Boys in Diego Mar­tin, Youth Train­ing Cen­tre in Arou­ca, and West­ern Di­vi­sion Po­lice Youth Club in Pe­tit Val­ley. Artistes in Res­i­dence are vet­er­an mu­si­cians Roy Cape and Er­rol Ince.

"The pro­gramme fo­cus­es not just on mu­sic, but al­so teach­es stu­dents re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and how to be mod­els in their com­mu­ni­ties," added Dou­glas.

"This is why the men­tor­ship com­po­nent con­tin­ues to be a sig­nif­i­cant part of this pro­gramme. Par­tic­i­pants will ben­e­fit from the years of ex­pe­ri­ence of our mu­si­cal icons, as there is no bet­ter way to gain in­sight and learn life lessons than to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­act with oth­ers who have al­ready ac­com­plished what you are striv­ing to do."

The ini­tia­tive fol­lows those of 2012 and 2013 when the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­istry ad­min­is­tered two se­mes­ters of its Mu­sic School in the Pa­n­yard, with over 250 par­tic­i­pants dur­ing 2012, and over 300 in 2013.

This year, the range of ben­e­fi­cia­ries has been ex­pand­ed by de­vel­op­ing re­la­tion­ships with in­sti­tu­tions that cater to youth at risk, and col­lab­o­rat­ing with or­gan­i­sa­tions that have a well-es­tab­lished body of work in that field.

The pro­gramme's par­tic­i­pants will be ex­posed to el­e­men­tary and in­ter­me­di­ate lev­els of in­stru­ment train­ing on wood­wind, brass, key­board, drumk­it, march­ing band drum, and the steel­pan. It be­gan on May 6 and ends on Ju­ly 26.

The ob­jec­tive is to ex­pose 200 par­tic­i­pants to holis­tic pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment in mu­sic in a pro­gramme that com­pris­es a 12-week cy­cle of 84 con­tact hours, with 50 par­tic­i­pants in class­es at each of the four venues. In ad­di­tion to res­i­dents of the fa­cil­i­ties, the Mu­sic Schools in the Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lab­o­ra­tive Project is open to all cit­i­zens.

"So­cial out­reach in­sti­tu­tions have tra­di­tion­al­ly been guid­ing lights of hope in com­mu­ni­ties," said Min­is­ter Dou­glas. "The in­volve­ment of res­i­dents of these in­sti­tu­tions, we be­lieve, will pro­vide prac­ti­cal strate­gies for al­ter­na­tive life choic­es in which hope­less­ness, des­per­a­tion, crime or delin­quen­cy are no longer op­tions."

In­no­va­tion in the cul­tur­al and cre­ative in­dus­tries is cru­cial for sus­tain­able ad­vance­ment in the glob­al en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, he opined, con­tend­ing that de­vel­op­ment of "our in­nate artistry and cre­ativ­i­ty" can sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­rich all cul­tur­al work­ers fi­nan­cial­ly and so­cial­ly, there­by con­tribut­ing to the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct of the lo­cal econ­o­my.

Al­so de­liv­er­ing re­marks at the func­tion were di­rec­tor of Cul­ture, In­grid Ruben, man­ag­er of St Mary's Chil­dren's Home, Pa­tri­cia Mar­tin-Ward, and deputy man­ag­er of St Michael's Home for Boys, Anne Marie Ar­naud-Thomas.