Global Music Campus to launch new curriculum

This will be followed by the first phase of the project, a nine-day organisational development workshop running from 28 April to 6 May. The workshop will be attended by directors and administrators from music schools and training centres in Ethiopia, Germany, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The workshop will provide skills training on how to run a sustainable social enterprise offering courses in music school administration and management, IT skills training, content management training, accreditation, cultural management and project development.

The proximity to the East African Performing Arts Market (DOADOA) will allow the participants to network with stakeholders in the region and present their organisations.

The idea of creating the Global Music Campus came after a fact-finding mission commissioned by the German Foreign Ministry in 2009 and conducted by the Global Music Academy in Southern Africa. The aim of the campus is to test ideas for a new practical music education system that focuses on the music of the region and uses modern teaching methods and curricula.

Campuses have since been held in South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, with workshops taking place in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

By enabling young musicians to acquire the necessary skills to perform, read, write, document and transmit their own music cultures, the campus empowers them to be active in the preservation and promotion of their rapidly eroding heritage, engage in local and interregional markets and contribute to the development of a diverse music sector.

The second phase of the East African project begins in September with the 23-day East African Global Music Campus, which will be staged in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Here the focus is on training  seven youth workers as music teachers for the partner schools in Ethiopia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

The Global Music Campus has been developing an innovative two-year curriculum since 2010 to provide professional training for aspiring young musicians through the region's music schools. The trainee music teachers will be trained in the use of the curriculum with a group of experienced facilitators from Africa and Germany, who are also responsible for designing the curriculum.

The ultimate aim of the programme is to create a network of music schools throughout the continent using a complementary system that will enable them to exchange teachers and students, best practices and cooperate inter-regionally and internationally.

The project is co-funded for the next two years by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union and the Goethe-Institut through the Goethe-Institut in Ethiopia, which is also a partner of the project.

Meanwhile, another initiative funded through the German Foreign Office Kulturerhalt programme will run in Zimbabwe this year. It involves film documentation of the drum cultures of Chiweshe, the mbira and sungura guitar styles. There will be interviews with surviving old masters, from which teaching videos and material will be produced.

For further details visit the project's website at www.global-music-campus.net

Here's a film made during the 2012 Global Music Campus in Soweto, South Africa.