Music outreach in Lebanon. What do the concerts on the Lebanon project mean to the local participants, and what are their views on the pupils’ involvement?

Abstract

One key element of the Lebanon project at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH) is music education and concert performances for and with children and young people living in the Palestinian refugee camp Rashidieh near Tyre in Southern Lebanon. The project also involves school concert collaborations with several Lebanese schools. The project is part of a wider collaboration between a number of organizations working to protect the interests of refugees in Lebanon. The project has its roots in NORWAC’s mental health programme. Every year since 2005, a group of third-year students from our music education bachelor programme has travelled to Lebanon to teach and perform concerts as part of the professional placement module of their course. Outreach work and concerts are becoming an increasingly important part of the Lebanon project at the NMH, and in recent years the students have given school concerts in several Lebanese schools in addition to the concerts performed with children and young people in the Rashidieh refugee camp. The school concerts have evolved into collaborations between the students and the schools they visit – primarily by increasing pupil participation and having the children prepare their own material, which they then perform together with the students.