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In the Community Campus of Raploch, a housing estate on the outskirts of Stirling, 120 children aged between six and 13 are rehearsing the Rondeau from Purcell's Abdelazer – familiar to most as the imposing opening theme of Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. This is the Big Noise Orchestra; but before the music can begin, this rustling, restless, excited gaggle of children must be calm.
"Let's have some Big Noise silence now," says the conductor, Francis Cummings, a former violinist with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
"We are going to sit in silence until you listen. What we need to do is start from silence."
Eventually, through squeaks and shuffles, through parps from the brass and bashes from the timpani, through the grunts from the basses and jitters from the violins, peace comes. And then the music starts.
In another part of the building, beyond the gym and the hairdressers, a second orchestra is preparing to rehearse in the sports hall. The musicians of Venezuela's Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, most of whom are in their 20s and early 30s, are making as much noise as 200 people with musical instruments can. There's a clatter of chat and tuning; lads in jeans and baseball caps are swapping violins, trying each other's instruments by turning musical tricks of insouciant virtuosity.
Then Gustavo Dudamel, their 31-year-old conductor, comes to the podium and sits down on his high stool. He looks up, and slightly raises both arms. At this simple gesture, all sound falls instantly away.
The two orchestras are rehearsing for the same event: a concert to be held on Thursday, 21 June in Raploch. It will open the London 2012 festival, the summer of cultural events ushering in the Olympic Games: an open-air concert for 8,000, to be broadcast live on BBC4. After that, the Venezuelans travel to London, where their concerts at the Southbank Centre on 23 and 26 June will be streamed live on the Guardian website.
Although the two orchestras appear so different – the Venezuelans with their grown-up professionalism and absolute concentration; the Scottish children still fresh to their instruments – they are related. Later Dudamel, who is also the much-fêted chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, calls the Scots "our little sons and daughters".
The children are the young members of Sistema Scotland, a radical social-intervention programme based on the model that produced these Venezuelan musicians. Like its Latin American exemplar, Sistema Scotland is hoping to change the lives of the children of an underprivileged community through immersion in classical music.
The Venezuelan El Sistema was founded by José Antonio Abreu, who began teaching music to 11 students in a Caracas garage. Thirty-seven years on, two million people – including, most famously, Dudamel and the players of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra – have passed through the programme.
Since that orchestra's sensational UK debut in Edinburgh and the Proms in 2007, it has exploded many British people's ideas about what classical music can be: these players perform with a fiery passion and joyous exuberance that counters the reputation of classical music as a polite pastime for the middle-aged middle classes.
The man behind the Scottish version of El Sistema is Richard Holloway, the author and former bishop of Edinburgh. Tipped off by the Guardian in 2005 about how El Sistema was trying to tackle social inequality in Venezuela, he travelled to Caracas, and was impressed.
"I felt in my bones it was what was needed. It was incremental, it was organic. It wasn't quick. To create a great orchestra is by definition slow. It's like growing hard, hard wood … Scotland, like other parts of Britain, has a problem with deprived communities that nothing seems to shift … I've been interested to see if there's not something in the world that would turn that around."
At the same time as Holloway was discovering the Venezuelan Sistema, Stirling council was trying to tackle the problems of one of its most deprived areas: Raploch. In 2004, it began a regeneration project in an area where, at the time, the average income was £6,240; a fifth of the residents were on incapacity benefit, and half of them had no formal educational qualifications.
"All the things that happen in deprived communities were happening here: underachieving children, unhealthy adults, a drug problem, kids fed into the criminal justice system," said Holloway. "But it also had a lot of feisty eager people who loved their children and wanted the best for them."
Holloway approached Stirling council and "they were as mad as we were". In 2008, Sistema Scotland began its work in Raploch, and now 450 children from the area (whose population is a little over 3,000) are learning how to play musical instruments. The scheme costs £750,000 a year – just 14% of which comes from the public purse.
But can classical music really be the instrument of social change? The truth is that the effects of Sistema Scotland will only really become clear when the children who started in its 2008 cohort grow up: will they escape the poverty trap and what Holloway calls the "revolving doors" of the youth criminal-justice system?
Even now, walking round the streets of Raploch – whose idyllic position on the banks of the Forth, beneath the benign gaze of Stirling Castle, stands in stark contrast to its history of social deprivation – it is impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say about Big Noise.
It is a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone, which means everyone knows a young musician. Taf Magoche, whose daughter Chantelle plays violin, says: "It's a thing that brings the community together, and in the long run it's sowing a lot more benefits because when the kids get older there will be more options.
"It's not the best community, but for the future it will be a lot better because of the project. When you look at the social unrest, people on benefits, drugs and all that … this programme has brought something new and different for the kids – something that's not running around the streets causing mayhem."
Elizabeth Martin has a grandson who plays the double bass – "bigger than he is". "The mothers are so proud of their kids," she said. "The wee tears will be in my eyes on Thursday night."
A report commissioned by the Scottish government found that all the parents of pupils in the Scottish Sistema felt their child's confidence had improved as a result of their involvement, and more than 90% felt that their child was happier.
What makes the Scottish Sistema different from other music education schemes in Britain, according to its director, Nicola Killean, is the fact that it is completely immersive.
"We have everything from baby classes to orchestral rehearsals," she said. The children involved play three times a week, for nearly three hours. It is also collective: "about being part of a community from the very beginning".
Unlike traditional European and north American music education, it does not focus on individual tuition: children play in an orchestra from the beginning.
Verónica Urrego, who teaches violin and viola in Raploch, and is herself a Venezuelan product of El Sistema, says: "We are not here just to teach them how to play an instrument, but also how to behave in a community, in a society.
"We have to give them the whole package – the discipline to behave in an orchestral rehearsal … It's not an extracurricular activity, it's a way of life," she says.
In Venezuela, the Sistema has grown organically as children grow up and feed back into the system as teachers. Holloway wants the same for Scotland, and a new scheme is on the cards for Govanhill in Glasgow. According to Dudamel, the orchestra can act as a microcosm of wider society.
"It has changed not just the lives of the individuals involved – but also of their families, the communities around the children.
"And it changed because they have access to beauty; because they have access to sensitivity; because they have access to creativity; they have access to discipline. We are talking here about the elements of a good citizen."
In Raploch, preparations continue for the big night and the big concert. Bartek Bialuckie, an 11-year-old cellist, professed himself "amazed at the sounds I can make" and excited about being conducted by Dudamel – "one of the best conductors on planet Earth".
The 20 best musicians from the Big Noise orchestra now join the Venezuelans to rehearse Beethoven's Egmont Overture together. Four years ago, these children were a handful of restless five-year-olds holding their instruments for the first time. Now, they are sitting alongside professionals.
One tiny blonde bass player is almost exactly half the size and heft of the huge Venezuelan sitting beside her. In the viola section, an 11-year-old girl called Nyree Davidson is playing with total focus and confidence. She has the indefinable poise and alertness of a true musician. She looks as if she has come home.
Both of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra's sold-out London concerts will be live-streamed, free, on the Guardian. Join us on 23 and 26 June at 7.30pm guardian.co.uk/bolivarlive
Comments
20 June 2012 10:37PM
Amid a panoply of demagogic stances, wrong diagnosis and utterly dysfunctional investments and interventions, this Scottish initiative stands out as a breath of fresh air. I am surprised that even the unreasonable Guardian, with its irresistible attraction for nonsense analyses and solutions for social disadvantage, has managed to appreciate the exceptional nature of this approach. What is England waiting for?
20 June 2012 10:37PM
Classical music requires concentration and to give something of yourself.
Most 'chart' pop is about greed and self satisfaction.
Is it any wonder that Classical music is like Kryptonite to idiots ?
20 June 2012 10:38PM
This scheme as run in Venezuela has been promoting and - against all odds- achieving social change and social mobility for some time , improving the lives and outlook for hundreds of thousands of children.
Michael Gove , David Cameron, Sutton Trust - get into this in a BIG SOCIETY way in England - it will do more to achieve social change and justice than any other scheme.
Enough.
Now -make it so.
20 June 2012 10:42PM
Good luck to them, however, contrast this article with the one yesterday about children going to school hungry and we see that there are more issues to tackle before we can improve pupils' lives soley through music education.
20 June 2012 10:43PM
just lets get the credit straight.
This is the initiative - set up in 1975- of one extraordinary South American , who should be Nobel Prize'd Jose Antonio Abreu.
Get it right , ok ?
Its not a Scottish initiative.
20 June 2012 10:44PM
England have several of these schemes running as a matter of fact - a very sucessful one in Merseyside
20 June 2012 10:58PM
Why so aggressive ? Yes Abreu started it, but every community has to start their own. And when every community has, believe me, every major social problem will slowly but surely start to disappear.
Repeat after me : Music is not an extra - it is the centre of good learning.
20 June 2012 10:58PM
Its not a Scottish initiative.
Yeah, its actually down to some dead bloke fae Bonn and thrilling lots of people in Bonny Scotland!
See what I did there? The Flower of Scotland.
20 June 2012 11:10PM
Is it any wonder that Classical music is like Kryptonite to idiots ?
What pretentious tosh.
Didn't "Nessun dorma" become a sports anthem? How many adverts use classical music as backing? The proms?
Nothing annoys classical music lovers more than the popular appeal of 'their' classical music.
20 June 2012 11:11PM
This is a wonderful initiative that should be promoted throughout the UK
One of the great tragedies of modern life is that the young are so shut out of what I will call classical music and High Culture
High Culture has nothing to do with rich people in expensive clothes talking in clever voices about music or the arts.It is about immersing oneself in areas where concentrated mental effort is needed.This focuses the mind and also opens it up to new dreams .
Music and poetry and more classical art forms are a mind forming educational experience in themselves even though the results may not be seen immediately
In Keith Richards recent biography he writes that sometimes when he and the other Stones are playing the effect they produce is so intense he feels he is on another planet...This is wonderful for him ...yet the question must be asked...if the"High "he gets is so good ,then why do he and other rock musicians feel the need to take drugs?
The answer is that the high from their music is not enough for their own remarkable musical abilities.Compare the classical musician.I have a friend who plays Beethoven piano sonatas..each time I play them I get something different ..he says...does he need drugs? no,the music is its own drug.
The young should be exposed to classical music as much as possible....everything in the nation could be transformed if this were done....
Its interesting ..and tragic... that this article has so far only attracted three comments.....
20 June 2012 11:32PM
I think that everybody knows where Sistema comes from. By "Scottish" I meant that the Scottish have been intelligent enough to understand that this is the way to go.
20 June 2012 11:36PM
Gosh, it seems that I have touched an open nerve of Little Englanders. Sorry, but at present the Scottish education system is way ahead the English one as far as social justice is concerned.
20 June 2012 11:37PM
So aggressive because they are not Scottish (and neither am I), I suppose.
20 June 2012 11:51PM
It is a great shame that music has come to be seen as a minority or bolt-on interest rather than one of the central pillars of education, as important as maths, english and science. Music is an essential part of human nature and a fundamental part of our emotional development. 'Classical' or otherwise, it's about time learning an instrument got back on the national curriculum.
And not the sodding recorder.
21 June 2012 12:05AM
This sort of iniative is excellent. More of these sorts of schemes are needed. I've seen first hand how the arts can have a really positive effect on children of all backgrounds. I couldn't believe the transformation I saw in teenagers, that were quite angry and disruptive, after being giving the trust to be part of an art gallery, in part of an outreach group. From their first days there, when they messed about, to going passed one of them one day, giving a talk to members of the public about a painting. And doing so in such a professional way too. I was really moved. Art and high culture is not elitist. Only when people are excluded. The art can benefit people enormosly. Same goes for drama, opera, music, latin, etc.
21 June 2012 12:05AM
everyone doesnt know where El Sistema comes from - otherwise i wouldn't have to explain it every time i mention it. For example, none of the adults i tutor at college evening classes knew anything at all about it .
Of course the Scots deserve credit for picking it up themselves , but given that so many people know absolutely nothing about El Sistema, lets get the message clear , ok ?
21 June 2012 12:06AM
initiative. I need typing lessons!
21 June 2012 12:08AM
my piece is full of typos- apologies.
21 June 2012 12:12AM
I'll be watching the live stream
21 June 2012 12:13AM
The Scots deserve much credit also because they don't have the English habit of being always so ridicously patronizing even with perfect foreigners.
21 June 2012 12:15AM
I am afraid that Ninjaworrior will come to lecture you very soon.
21 June 2012 12:56AM
Come off it, CordeliaRosalind. Unfair. And untrue.
21 June 2012 1:22AM
Aw, c'mon: Raploch's got to be well up the league table of places where kids go to school hungry - and well before the last couple of years, too. It's well up the league table of places with long term (no boom-times) multiple deprivation whatever indicators you care to use.
For a hundred grand a year of public money it's improving the lives and prospects of not only 400-odd schoolkids but sending major social ripples through an entire community. And - as a point of fact - that HAS been done solely by music education without yer "other issues" being tackled.
Yes, other things do badly need to be done: hunger does need to be tackled -- but this does not replace that. It cannot substitute for it: nor can school feeding programmes substitute for this: for the price of a couple of middle-managers, not only the lives of individuals but the life of their families and of a blighted community is undergoing deep change.
Did you listen to the wee girl mention having played the Albert Hall? A place she would never otherwise have heard of - at least not before the age where she'd immediately identify it as one of life's "not for the likes of us" kind of place. That's one huge mental, economic and social barrier leaped before she realised it existed. Priceless.
21 June 2012 1:53AM
flatfrog
There's nowt wrong with the sodding recorder, especially if is used as a stepping stone to develop sight-reading, following a conductor, playing in an ensemble, etc; all useful skills no matter what you end up playing.
21 June 2012 2:44AM
Cultural learnings of Bolivarian Republic for make benefit benighted Caledonia.
21 June 2012 3:26AM
I don't really see how you can substantiate some of the claims you make in your comment. How do you know that the scheme has made major social ripples through an entire community as a point of fact? Your "not the likes of us" comment is unfounded. I myself grew up in a very poor community and had no opportunity or desire to play a musical instrument but decided to give it a go in my late twenties and have stuck playing the cello ever since. There is this reductionist thinking that orchestral music is for the upper classes which you simultaneously preclude and support within your comment.
21 June 2012 7:29AM
No, what annoys classical music lovers is that the vast majority of the public these days think classical music isn't for them, without realising that the music you're talking about IS "classical" music, that they DO like it. We desperately want more people to come to know how wonderful it it.
21 June 2012 7:32AM
I started on the recorder in junior school, moved to the trombone in comprehensive school and have been a professional musician for over 30 years. I know how beneficial communal music-making is. I wish that this scheme was available all over the UK. It would change lives for the better in so many ways.
21 June 2012 7:35AM
There's nothing wrong with the recorder, and a lot right with it. It's cheap, it's unbreakable, it's easy to start to play. The descant is the right size for young hands. Using a recorder, a child can be taught to read musical notation, along with the rudiments of melody and rhythm. A child who can blow a recorder properly can start on the popular wind instruments, sax, flute, trumpet, etc. by transferring a skill. Recorders are suitable both for large group and individual tuition.
And JS Bach thought enough of recorders to make them a featured instrument in one of his most wonderful works.
21 June 2012 8:12AM
They started up a recorder club in my local school a few years ago but quickly had to abandon it because too many children wanted to play.
(Shakes head, sadly.)
21 June 2012 8:36AM
Before Chavez, the Venezuelan government was a vehicle of personal enrichment for the oligarchy. El Sistema had always been starved of funds. The families were hungry, very poor, no health care and expensive and out-of-reach education. Once Chavez was elected, he brought 30,000 Cuban doctors and health workers and established free healthcare to ALL. All families got for the first time subsidized food, property titles, free university education and adult education. The families of El Sistema got a monitary stipend for their children to learn music and play in orchestras instead of having to work to supplement meager family income. Before Chavez, many kids of El Sistema did not have food in their stomachs. So, twelve years of the Bolivarian Revolution has indeed made the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra sound what it sounds...GREAT. The world thanks President HUGO CHAVEZ for this gift to the world that you have supported with generosity and honesty.
21 June 2012 9:24AM
Perhaps you shoud read the article before commenting.
21 June 2012 9:32AM
Surely Cordelia, the Guardian's "attraction for nonsense analyses" is unfailing rather than "irresistible". It is the object of the attraction that is irresistible, rather than the attraction itself.
21 June 2012 9:34AM
Avoiding the ridiculous debate on this comment board, this is an excellent program and I hope it is extended further across the country or a similar system is set up here, that would be most welcome. The collective effort to create this kind of music has a profound effect on the participants and could be used to heal a divided and broken society!
I never had the opportunity to participate in anything like this, had the odd recorder lesson with a terrible teacher which put me off and then found a spanish classical guitar in the loft and began to teach myself, fortunately I have supportive parents and this led on to attending a British conservatoire and kick started a life long love of music both sides of the perceived high/low divide!
Music is an excellent tool for social cohesion and the creation of well rounded and thoughtful individuals!
21 June 2012 9:56AM
With that attitude we never progress. Of course there are other very pressing 'issues' but no reason to not encourage these.
21 June 2012 10:05AM
Who gives a toss whether it is Venezuelan, Little Scotlander, Martian... as long as it is positive and improves children's, people's lives?
21 June 2012 10:11AM
What a wonderful and heartwarming story. I wish this project every success and hope it can extend much wider. God knows we need anything which can give hope and confidence to our young people, especially those living in deprived communities like Raploch.
21 June 2012 10:19AM
We surely all agree music is a wonderful force for good, classical and practically any other style except perhaps the pop/ glam/ greed variety.
Whilst all applauding both the Venezuelan and our own initiatives have we all noticed that Gove - in his attempt to recreate some fantasy world from his own past - is abolishing the National Curriculum for secondary schools - in the context of an era of cuts
This means headmasters can rid themsleves of what many of them regard as peripheral, costly and unecessary Music, Drama and Art departments.
21 June 2012 11:25AM
'Gove - in his attempt to recreate some fantasy world from his own past - is abolishing the National Curriculum for secondary schools - in the context of an era of cuts
This means headmasters can rid themsleves of what many of them regard as peripheral, costly and unecessary Music, Drama and Art departments.'
It may also mean that schools CAN make room for better music tuition without being harrassed for straying from the NC.
21 June 2012 11:49AM
yes! :
"And it changed because they have access to beauty; because they have access to sensitivity; because they have access to creativity; they have access to discipline. We are talking here about the elements of a good citizen."
21 June 2012 11:57AM
I would like to believe that would happen but I cant see it. I do hope you are right.
21 June 2012 12:20PM
This is a bit of a generalisation. Not all rock musicians take drugs, and not all who do do it because of the reason you've decided, just as not all classical musicians are abstainers! Just because your friend refrains doesn't mean classical music itself is the all-giving drug precluding the need for any other?
As for "everything in the nation could be transformed if this were done" - I think you're running away with yourself on the high horse here. Yes, classical music has in this case been a good agent for change but it is not the panacea for every national ill.
I agree with the benevolent sentiment but disagree with the way some people elevate this one form of music to the very highest sphere casting all else into shade
21 June 2012 12:57PM
Why are you so hung up on this?
The fact that it follows a Venezuelan initiative is not relevant; the education authority in Stirling, supported by the Scottish Government, have started this initiative, from scratch, in Stirling. It is, therefore, a Scottish initiative. And there's no reason why there shouldn't be a number of similar English initiatives.
21 June 2012 1:41PM
yes they do, especially TO the English, in fact I find that virtually everything the Scots claim the English to be, they are themselves to a greater extent. (I'm British, half Scottish, half English)
21 June 2012 1:44PM
It NEEDS to be due to the innate, little Scotlander bigotry demonstrated by a great number of Scots, the most diverse city in the world, London, could never exist in Scotland.
21 June 2012 2:15PM
Brilliant video linked to this story.
Thanks very much for covering this. Great initiative.
21 June 2012 2:16PM
By the way
EDS -
How can we contribute to this?
Do they do fundraising? Do they need funds for instruments?
21 June 2012 2:22PM
To @eyecollector
You asked on the Rusbridger interview with Dudamel where you could find the vid from the 2007 proms
Here is the unforgettable Mambo performance they did. The rest is also up on the site.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWs9G-c_pcs&feature=fvst
21 June 2012 4:00PM
I am sorry Dermutt, but English is only my second spoken language out of a total of five. You know, "on the Continent" we tend not to be monolingual and monocultural as you Little Englanders.
21 June 2012 4:01PM
yes they do, especially TO the English, in fact I find that virtually everything the Scots claim the English to be, they are themselves to a greater extent. (I'm British, half Scottish, half English)
I am sorry Dermutt, but English is only my second spoken language out of a total of five. You know, "on the Continent" we tend not to be monolingual and monocultural as you Little Englanders.