The sounds of rural schools

Past event

From active listening to collective creation

Project summary

The sounds of rural schools. From active listening to collective creation arises from the collaboration between the Cerezales Antonino y Cinia Foundation and the Colegio Rural Agrupado Ribera del Porma. This project aims to stimulate learning and sound experimentation through the stay at the CRA of the musician and pedagogue Luis Martínez Campo in collaboration with the pianist and composer Hara Alonso and Juventudes Musicales de León. Starting from a local perspective, the project seeks to experiment with sound through experience, emphasising the processes of collective creation and relating them to the core subjects through three key concepts: soundscape, orality and sound recording. From an attitude of listening and collaboration, the process is guided by three questions: What do we sound like? What does our environment sound like? What does the world sound like?

Co-financed by the Daniel & Nina Carasso Foundation (thanks to being selected in the call for proposals CLAVES), the project will be developed over three academic years (starting in September 2017 and ending in June 2020), during school hours, involving CRA students, their families and teachers.

Follow the whole process in the project blog and on social networks with the hashtag #SoundsOfTheSchool.

Objectives

• Promote the local perspective, The aim is to make the local space relevant to the global imaginary. The aim is to awaken in the pupils an outlook based on self-esteem and constructive criticism of everyday experiences and the relationship with the environment in which they are expressed. The revaluation of what is local and close to them in order to gain access to the global.
• Approach music and sound from the point of view of the interdisciplinarity, using the contents of the core subjects to reach the creation of sound. Abandon the fragmentation of knowledge into hermetic disciplines and create knowledge from experience and participation, in a holistic and integral way. To use students' previous knowledge to introduce creative musical experience as a component of the culture of which they are a part.
• Focusing on music practice from the improvisation towards the development of processes and not towards the achievement of products. The aim is also to promote the practice of improvisation as a public space (in which everyone participates) for collective communication.
• Developing the empowerment The aim is to stimulate confidence in the students' own creative and managerial abilities within the group, and thus encourage students to find their own solutions to problems, and even to formulate their own questions.

Actions

The project is articulated around three annual actions that reflect the path from the local to the global:

1. Residence. For nine months of the year, Luis Martínez Campo will join the CRA in a teaching-learning process in which the core subjects (mathematics, language, natural and social sciences) will be related to sound creation and experimentation from a holistic point of view. Starting from the voice and the body, the environment and the landscape will be explored through listening in order to reach collective creation. Active listening, improvisation and collective reflection will be encouraged.
2. Immersion workshop. It is conceived as a space in which some of the practices developed during the residency will crystallise. At the end of each course, during two weeks, a concert-sample will be prepared by Hara Alonso, with works written expressly by the composer based on the experiences in the classrooms. They will be composed for an ensemble made up of CRA students and JJMM musicians.
3. Collaboration with Musical Youth of León. This association brings together dozens of young musicians who are in training or who have already completed their studies. The collaboration is based on the musicians' stays as participants in the classrooms and the formation of the ensemble in the immersion workshop.

Team

Luis Martínez Campo is a teacher, musicologist and percussionist, with extensive experience in music pedagogy. He has carried out workshops in which he relates music with other arts (especially with the performing arts) with children, teenagers and young people, as well as other multidisciplinary projects linked to education. She currently combines her teaching activity with performance and the creation of theatrical sound spaces.

Hara Alonso is a pianist and composer. She combines her work as a concert pianist and pedagogue in the field of contemporary creation. She has carried out educational projects related to the teaching of improvisation and new technologies in conservatories and music schools in Spain and abroad, as well as multimedia projects for citizen participation.

Musical Youth of León began its activity in 1998 and in 1999 signed a Collaboration Agreement with the University of León. It currently has an Orchestra, a Music Band and two choirs, as well as coordinating the concert cycles of the winners of the Permanent Competition of Juventudes Musicales de España.

Nadia Teixeira is responsible for the area of Education and Public Programmes at the FCAYC. Her training has been linked to Art History and Art Education. She is responsible for cultural mediation and general coordination of the project..

María José Pavía is a teacher specialised in Therapeutic Pedagogy, tutor of the primary school group in Santa Olaja de la Ribera. She is one of those responsible for the coordination of the project in the C.R.A. Ribera del Porma.

Isabel Alonso is a primary school teacher in the bilingual section and director of the C.R.A. Ribera del Porma. She is one of those responsible for the coordination of the project at C.R.A. Ribera del Porma.

Jaime Martínez is the president of the AMPA of C.R.A. Ribera del Porma. He will be the representative and coordinator of the spaces in which the Parents' Association participates.