MillieMusicTZ: The El Sistema Fellowship

I had the great privilege of joining the 2014 class of El Sistema Fellows at the New England Conservatory in Boston, MA. Myself and nine other Fellows spent nine months at the NEC, Venezuela and on residencies in the US and abroad exploring more of how this philosophy of music education is impacting children's lives and the wider community. The fellowship was created as a result of Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu receiving the TED prize: http://blog.tedprize.com/el-sistema-fellows-the-new-class/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=el-sistema-fellows-the-new-class. You can also find biographies of the fifth class of El Sistema fellows here: http://necmusic.edu/fifth-class-sistema-fellows

The content of the program below I have taken from the NEC website:

The Sistema Fellows Program is a professional training program designed for ten postgraduate musicians and music educators who are passionate about creating careers for themselves that connect music, youth, and social change. Past participants in the Program have gone on to guide the development of numerous El Sistema-inspired programs across the United States and beyond.

Founded in 1975, El Sistema is Venezuela's celebrated free youth orchestra and social action program that provides potentially life-changing experiences for several hundred thousand children annually in rural and urban communities across the country. El Sistema has also produced internationally successful musicians such as Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra. The success of El Sistema has generated excitement throughout the world, and many programs inspired by El Sistema have begun to emerge around the globe, including more than fifty in the US.

Between September and May, the Sistema Fellows engage in an intensive curriculum that includes leadership, communication, non-profit strategy, funding, operations, evaluation and assessment, and educational philosophy and policy. The learning is a combination of classroom seminars and experiential work in the field. In the fall semester, Fellows spend four weeks in residence at El Sistema-inspired programs of their choosing across the US. There is also a month-long residency in Venezuela in the spring semester. To put their learning into practice, Fellows are required to spend the subsequent year serving the emerging field of El Sistema-inspired initiatives.

The class has its own blog at http://sistemafellows.typepad.com/ and many of the previous Fellows have their own websites and blogs. I have also documented my experiences of this year on this blog.