The MY PEACE project hosted an information evening at ATU Sligo on November 27th. The event aimed to inform people about the work of the project to date, the resources available to download, the selection of video resources available, and to meet some of the students who have participated in the project.
MY PEACE – Music For Youth, is an Erasmus project to develop a suite of tools and resources to help youth educators and educators in the creative arts use music to support peacebuilding, conflict resolution and integration. The project has run for two years, with a consortium of Partners from France, Germany, Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine and Ireland.
The initial work in the project involved desk research and interviews with music educators, youth educators, young people and stakeholders. The research findings led to the development of two valuable resources. The MY PEACE Compendium of Good Practice has over twenty examples of peacebuilding and how music has been used for peacebuilding from across Europe. The second resource is the MY PEACE roadmap methodology, which outlines practical steps to take to use music as a peacebuilding tool. Both publications were presented at last night’s event and are available to download from the project website.
The next phase of the project involved hosting peacebuilding music sessions in each partner country and developing videos from each of these sessions. The Irish events took place at ATU Sligo in March, with members of the ATU Music and Bands society. The videos were premiered at last night’s event, to a very positive reaction. All the project videos have been uploaded to the project YouTube channel.
In September, a group of 40 students, educators and youth workers gathered for an international workshop in Bordeaux. The Irish delegation was led by Denise Callan from Momentum, who was joined by 14 students from ATU Sligo. During the five-day workshop, students participated in a series of peacebuilding, cultural awareness and music workshops. This led to the formation of 4 international music groups and the creation of four new pieces of music, which they performed in Bordeaux to close the workshop. These performances are also available on the project’s YouTube channel and were shown at the event at ATU Sligo.
Some of the students who participated in the project joined a panel discussion to explore the impact the project has had on them and how they would carry that impact with them into the future. They spoke very positively about the impact MY PEACE has had on them, with one stating, “Once we played music together, it was like we knew each other”, while another encouraged students to participate in the Erasmus project, saying, “Jump at the chance to take part in a project. It gives you the chance to meet new people, and you don’t know where the opportunity is going to bring you, so just go for it”
The event finished with a performance of one of the pieces of music created at the international workshop, followed by very sociable discussions over tea, coffee and cake, giving the participating students and the Momentum team the chance to speak more informally about the project to the audience of University staff and students, as well as representatives of external youth organisations.
Momentum would like to acknowledge the huge support they and the MY PEACE project have received from ATU Sligo and from the ATU Music and Bands Society.
