Music Fund
Van Volxemlaan 164
1190 Brussel
Belgium
Brussels
Belgium
- Arts
- Democracy and community development
- International/Cultural relations
Music Fund provides material support to young musicians and music schools in developing countries and conflict areas.
We collect musical instruments, check them and repair them before distributing them. We also organise workshops and courses in instrument building and repair. The workshops take place in the regions where our partner schools are located and longer internships are held in Belgium in the workshops of instrument builders and repairers.
Thanks to Music Fund young musicians are given a chance to develop their musical talents. The different current and upcoming projects are a unique form of cultural development partnerships.
1. Collecting instruments: Music Fund’s first task is to collect instruments. In 2005 we organised the collections ourselves, but since the beginning of 2006 concert organisers in different European countries (France, Austria, Great Britain and Germany joined Belgium in this), take charge of this as part of concerts, festivals or other events.
The second phase is where the complex work begins: the instruments are collected, checked by experts and repaired and all details are carefully entered into a database.
2. Distributions: Around Christmas 2005 a first shipment of repaired instruments arrived in the Middle East by lorry. These musical instruments were then handed over in person to the different partner schools in Palestine (Gaza, Ramallah en Nablus) and Israel (Nazareth). Since then several large shipments have been organised in the Middle East and in Africa ( Mozambique + DRCongo)
3. Training:Since 2006 we have called in the help of a number of experts to set up initiation workshops in repairing, tuning and building musical instruments in the local music schools in South. This is a unique opportunity for Music Fund to complete a capacity building project that supports music education in a very concrete manner. Since 2006 we also provide longer internships in Belgium and at the partnerschools. Recently we also supported a student to obtain a diploma at a reputed school in France and will continue to offer other students this opportunity
4. Repair workshops in the partnerschools: In 2007 Music Fund started running repair workshops in several of its partner schools: in Ramallah in 2007 (in collaboration with other associations), in Maputo in 2007, in Nablus in 2008, and finally in Kinshasa in 2008. These repair workshops are an important part of our partnerships, because not only do they make it possible for the music schools to maintain their own musical instruments independently of Music Fund, they also create incomes as musicians from outside the music schools bring their instruments to these workshops for repair. They are an employment opportunity for people who have followed training courses in instrument repairs via Music Fund.