Collective Composition Enabling Intercultural Dialogue Among Young Musicians
Everyday Echoes: Kampala to Athens is a collaborative project that brings together Brass for Africa (BfA) in Uganda and El Sistema Greece (ESG) in Greece, two social music programmes, to deepen their artistic partnership and foster meaningful intercultural dialogue between young people through music. The project is grounded in the shared pedagogical framework of the Academy for Impact through Music (AIM), which emphasises holistic development, intrinsic motivation, agency, artistry, and community. AIM also participates in the project as an associate dissemination partner.
Running from September 2026 to April 2028, the project invites teaching artists and young people aged 14-26 in Greece and Uganda to explore aspects of each other’s everyday lives and transform them into inspiration for new artistic material. Teaching artists from both organisations will work together through online co-design sessions and two transnational residencies, one in Greece and one in Uganda, developing a shared intercultural teaching artistry framework based on collective composition, improvisation, and reflective dialogue.
In parallel, young people in Athens and Kampala will take part in artistic labs, capturing sounds, images, and short videos from their everyday lives and exchanging them with their peers abroad. Guided by the teaching artists, they will respond creatively to these materials and transform fragments of everyday experience into new musical ideas. Through this process, participants will develop creative confidence, empathy, curiosity, and a deeper understanding of one another’s cultural contexts.
The creative process will lead to four collectively composed musical pieces, presented in two public performances in Athens and Kampala. The project journey will also be documented by local filmmakers, culminating in an artistic documentary that offers audiences a more personal perspective on the lived realities and cultural contexts of the participating communities.
The project will also produce a Toolkit and an online webinar for teaching artists and organisations in the wider music-for-social-action sector, sharing practical approaches to intercultural exchange and collective composition. Through these activities, Everyday Echoes aims to strengthen the long-term collaboration between Brass for Africa and El Sistema Greece and contribute to a sustainable model of European-African artistic and pedagogical exchange.
The project is implemented with the support of the Goethe-Institut and Expertise France, in partnership with Institut français, within the framework of the Connect & Create programme funded by the European Union.
