The Different Colours of Music
Erasmus Plus Project N. 2017-1-IT02-KA201-036699
Music for Everyone, Music with Everyone
“The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein”
The school "G.Bianco - G. Pascoli" is a lower secondary school located in Fasano, in Apulia.
It was born from the fusion of two different middle schools in Fasano as decided by the Italian Ministry of Education. Hence, there are two different buildings located in the suburbs of the town that has 40.000 inhabitants.
Fasano is a beautiful town in the South of Italy, its economy is based mainly on tourism, agriculture and commerce, but despite its enourms potentialities, there is a high percentage of unemployment and obviously of economic difficulty.
The population of our school is complex because there are students with different socioeconomic situations. Many students live some kilometers from the town centre, near the sea or in the countryside. In addition, there are pupils who live in two protected communities for teenagers chosen by the Juvenile Court.
Fot these and other reasons, most of our students are disadvantaged: they belong to poor families, or they live in cultural deprived environnments, some are disabled, or with special needs, or foreign students, with a 20% on 777 total students.
There is a cohabitation between foreign immigrants of first and second generation, not perfectly integrated yet, unfortunately, Italian citizens with big affective and relationship difficulties. The main objective of our school is, for this reason, the cooperation among those students who are at high risk of social and school drop out.
Many activities done at school are made with the help of associations, in this way the aim is to increase the sense of belonging to the community and the sharing of different experiences.
There are also disabled students who are integrated in normal classes and follow all the activities proposed to the rest of the class where you can find a specialised teacher whose aim is to foster total inclusion.
Why "The different colours of music"?
In our school students study many subjects, such as Maths, Science, Foreign Languages, History, Geography, Technology, Music, Art, Gym, Italian. In addition, there are 3 optional courses to learn playing musical instruments. Students can learn to play: guitar, violin, drums, sax, oboe, piano, horn, clarinet. Their studies aim to compose a big orchestra and at the end of each school year, they perform in a public concert. These courses are for a limited number of learners, and students that apply to be part of them, are more than the ministry can activate. For this reason, students have to pass a selection. The excluded ones have no possibilities to have the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument at school.
We want to let our students experience different possibilities to understand and appreciate music.
“AccordiAbili” was born in 2011, it is a private non-profit association of social promotion. Its name is composed by the union of the word “Accordi” that means “Chords” with “Abili” that means “Able”.
It’s a non-profit organization whose main objectives are: to encourage research and development of new technologies that allow the handicapped persons to do a variety of activities such as playing a musical instrument or dedicating himself to any creative activity; to produce and promote social involvement of disabled through cultural events especially music, theatre, dance.
“AccordiAbili” is an association of social promotion created in order to decline possibilities of integrated interventions that have as background the varied area of disability and that of music. In addition to the ordinary social, cultural and awareness activities, “AccordiAbili” promotes and supports the Project E-Motion. İt is a research and new technologies experimentation project that allows disabled to play a musical instrument. It is a hardware and software development project through which a musical instruments is custom-tailored built according to specific abilities of a disabled with intact cognitive skills. Thanks to the contribution of musicians, technicians (engineers, robotics engineers, mechanics, artisans and health workers), and to the collaboration with the ONLUS Association “Informatici senza frontiere” (Informatics without borders), it aims to create musical instruments adapted to each person's disability.