Music is an important part of European cultural identity, therefore, it is necessary to encourage its development. It is exactly in the field of secondary education that we have been detecting a significant gap. Therefore, special attention should be given to this issue and new project promoting music should be initiated. The Diocesan Classical Gymnasium that works within St. Stanislav’s Institution and Frederic Chopin Secondary Music School have decided to carry out a joint project to further develop their orchestral and choral activities along with exchanging good practice among conductors and teachers, getting an insight into the teaching process of another school, preparing concerts and thus motivate students to play music. Another aim of the project is to prepare materials to be used by other conductors and music teachers and create a set of workshops for pre-school children to promote music. Both orchestras and a choir will be able to perform more demanding instrumental or vocal-instrumental pieces of music. Following the auditions at the beginning of each school year, the conductors will create a string orchestra and choirs with a balanced distribution of instruments and voices. From the middle of September to March, the groups will practise together on a weekly basis or more often to prepare for the first exchange. After the first exchange, the preparation period for the second exchange starts and the same process repeats during the entire duration of the project. After three years and following the final evaluation of the project, we will discuss new methods to be applied to improve the quality of the involved groups. Following the auditions, the conductors are responsible for choosing the repertoire for their own group and start discuss the joint repertoire after seeing how quality the groups are, however this should be done until 30 November 2017 at the latest to have enough time to prepare for the first exchange in March 2018. For the exchanges to come, the repertoire should be chosen before the start of the next school year. The string orchestras take part in all exchanges, whereas the choirs participate in their home country. There will be other music instruments added to the orchestra or smaller ensembles will be formed to play a certain piece of music. Student exchanges with a joint concert as the main event will take place in spring and autumn (4 exchanges altogether). In the meantime, the project will be run on TwinSpace, for which the so-called journalistic-cultural group along with their mentors will be responsible. In addition, planning, discussing and other activities will go on between the coordinators and conductors. For a quality and persuasive performance, intensive joint rehearsals are the key. Therefore, the rehearsals are an important part of an exchange. In addition, it is very important that the participating students get to know each other and become friends. Therefore, special attention will be given to promote social skills and become acquainted with history, geography, language and the common way of life of the hosting country. The students will be actively involved in all project stages from planning, choosing the repertoire to organizing concert and promoting them. To communicate with each other and to share the results, we will use email, Skype, Facebook, Youtube, eTwinning. In addition to music, graphic design (creating promotional materials), filming (recording rehearsals, concerts and making short films), drawing (workshops: drawing and listening to music), creative writing will be part of the project as well. In addition to students making music, other students will also participate in the project. Their main responsibility will be to carry out promotional and dissemination activities and to participate in some of the workshops. As far as the teachers are concerned, the conductors, the mentors of the journalistic-cultural group and some other music teachers of both schools will be involved in the project. Some of the participating teachers will attend two joint staff trainings to exchange good practice, observe lessons in another school, carry out a lesson, participate in various workshops and design and develop a set of workshop for pre-school children aimed at promoting music and its positive impacts. The project coordinators are responsible for the smooth running of the project. To ensure this, regular communication is required along with four transnational meetings. Due to high motivation from both schools and their reliability, we do not expect big problems that would pose threats to the project. On the other side, we expect as many positive impacts as possible. The newly-developed workshops for pre-school children and gathered materials that will be given to interested music teachers and conductors ensure the sustainability of the project. In addition, both schools also plan to further cooperate with each other after finishing the project.
Music to Life was a KA2 Erasmus+ project, involving St. Stanislav's Institution, Ljubljana and Music Conservatory Frederic Chopin, Krakow. Within St. Stanislav's the Diocesan Classical Gymnasium and the Music School were active in the project. During the phase of application, we wanted to emphasise the importance of music to our European cultural and art heritage. We were aiming to bolster the somewhat neglected field in the course of general education. By the end of the project we have succeeded in this endeavour by improving and upgrading the array of supplementary activities. An even greater benefit arose from the – more active than anticipated – participation of our Music School. We achieved a greater cohesion and cooperation within our institution and the Music School gained both professional capacities as well as advanced in their ability to participate in the international environment. Similarly, the benefits of the Polish partner were substantial when it comes to their capacity for international cooperation. For them it was the first time they participated in any such project. The benefited greatly from the aid of InERD (Institute for Education Research and Development), operating within St. Stanislav's. InERD, being among other things the project office, tended to the implementation of project management trainings, did the project monitoring and provided logistical and administrative support when needed. Professionally, active participants in the project were music pedagogues, that remain in contact even now, after the conclusion of the project. The main idea was the sharing of good practices and motivating the youth to actively participate in various (extracurricular) activities. Having more skills and experience the Slovenian partner mentored the Polish in the segment of choirs and the Polish partner mentored the Slovenian one in the field of orchestra and individual instrument instruction. A large part of the project leaned against the planned larger mobilities including students. Teachers met to plan the project during the planned transnational meetings and further improved their professional profiles in joint staff training events (including job shadowing and work placement assignments). The core of the project would be however represented by the 3 conducted student mobilities out of the 4 planned. Unfortunately, the last strand of mobility was impossible due to the COVID situation, however the Polish partner unable to travel almost justified the entire amount of the travel and subsistence grant in the first student mobility. The Slovenian partner, however, managed to use the grant in a way that enabled more than 300 % of the planned mobilities. Though the last part of the project (including virtual meetings for evaluation) was not conducted according to plan, we believe that we managed to fulfill all of the planned objectives. In the course of the project (and mobilities in particular) we strived for students to take a role – as active as possible. As among the project objectives was also the improvement of their (transversal) skills, we placed much emphasis on involving them in activities augmenting their communication, presentation, organisation … skills. Professors included in the project shared their good practices and worked together on developing a system enabling them to separately prepare the students for a joint performance (both choir and orchestra). Organisationally and professionally we made some advances, we have developed approaches and honed our skills and we are ready to disseminate this even after the project. In the course of the 3 student mobilities over 20 larger and smaller concerts and performances were held. It would be remiss, however, not to mention the largest and technically most demanding event. During an exchange in Ljubljana, joint choirs and orchestras performed in front of a sold out largest national concert venue for classical music – Gallus Hall of Cankarjev dom (with 1.700 seats). A live streaming of the event with professional sound and 6 cameras was also organised on YT and followed by an additional 300 viewers. The central piece of the concert – Te Deum of Anton Bruckner was later viewed 30.000 times on YT. And a great anecdotical testament to the quality of the performance was provided inadvertently by the YT algorithms. Shortly after streaming ended the recording was pulled for the reason of 2 outstanding automatic copyright claims. YT recognised parts of the concert as the performance of Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and parts as Corydon Singers. The project represents a stepping stone towards future cooperation. Project partners are already coordinating the potential future project with an enlarged partnership and are looking for various other ways to disseminate the project results further.