The Songs for Europe Project Consortium launch
The Songs for Europe Project Consortium launch – joining forces and voices in innovative teaching methods.
Vienna/Athens/Srebrenica/Bratislava
Four remarkable music education programs, wirth music academy, Superar Slovakia, El Sistema Greece and House of Good Tones Srebrenica, have successfully kicked- off with an on-line workshop a cooperation project focused on best practices in innovative teaching methods, using state-of-the-art IT and AI tools.
Songs for Europe, funded by European Union – Creative Europe program, offers musicians and teachers of the four participating countries (Austria, Greece, Bosnia, Slovakia) the experience of working together, joining forces and voices, and sharing their most effective teaching methods. The consortium organizations share the same mission – that of social inclusion through music. They provide high-quality music education in choirs and ensembles for all children free of charge, with a special focus on those from socially and economically disadvantaged communities.
Twelve teaching artists, three per organization, will travel across Europe (to Vienna, Bratislava, Srebrenica, Athens) for joint workshops, discovering the fun of teamwork, the importance of collaboration, the inspiration of striving for a higher common goal. They will be challenged to lead their students through new ways of learning, while innovative IT and AI tools will be provided to them to support the learning and evaluating of successful adoption of the method.
In recent years, there has been a growing body of knowledge provided by cognitive scientists confirming the benefits of music education for the development of both hemispheres of the brain, intelligence and academic performance, as well as social traits and creativity. By making music together, children learn from each other and take responsibility for each other. To maximize these benefits– and make them accessible to all, prof. Gerald Wirth, the artistic leader of the project, created a method aiming at fostering artistic talent and performance skills, boosting students learning capacity in an interactive, fun-based, and motivating approach. The “wirth method“ demonstrates that the overarching aim of all good (music) teaching practices worldwide relate to high student attentiveness, engagement, responsiveness, positive emotion. Using associative learning through a fun & game orientation approach ultimately leads to high-quality music skills acquisition and can be achieved by all music teachers most effectively and efficiently.
Support element of the wirth method is a pioneering IT system titled SMART (Systemic Music Analytics Response for Teachers), which measures students’ attention and singing performance as well as their focus, engagement. It helps teaching artists improve their teaching strategies and carefully plan the structure of their lessons – leading children to more focused, joyful, even immersive learning.
“Referring to our past success, we can prove that children who enjoy themselves while learning make rapid progress. Our students learn exceptionally fast and discover what they are really capable of.“
Prof. Gerald Wirth.
Songs for Europe will create a rich on-line library of new arrangements available to public and private schools alike, which will include various levels for group teaching, that teaching artists from all over the world can use freely.
Music students will benefit from high-quality training and will have better chances of success, while teachers will improve their skills and know-how, opening new opportunities for them.
A quarterly newsletter about our progress will be available through the project website www.songsforeurope.eu.
Consortium partners:
wirth music academy, Austria
Superar Slovakia
El Sistema Greece
House of Good Tones, Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina
