The International Music Council (IMC) – UNESCO’s advisory body on music –  last month announced Scoil Úna Naofa Violin and Orchestra Project in Crumlin, Dublin, as the 2019 Music Rights Award Laureate. The award is to acknowledge a music project that embodies the organisation’s ‘Five Music Rights’, which focus on the rights of children, adults and all musicians. 

The project began in 2006 when then principal Bernadette Sweeney and Dr Joanna Crooks made violin lessons accessible to all students at the primary school. Students now have free access to musical tuition and instruments from their first year in primary school right up to finishing secondary school. 

Speaking about the award, Dr Crooks said:

Winning the International Music Council’s Music Rights Award 2019 highlights the ground-breaking work undertaken in Crumlin giving children and adults access to tuition and instruments without barriers, and brings the issues surrounding it the delivery of music rights to national attention.

Three music groups
There are three elements to the project: an orchestra for the primary school, a chamber orchestra  for secondary school students, and a string orchestra for parents. Every year there is also a summer camp featuring musicians from all groups. 

In addition to the three music groups, a Community Centre for Music & the Arts, founded in 2012, provides a range of activities for the wider community in Crumlin, including a ‘Memory Lane’ choir for local dementia patients and their carers. 

Since the project’s inception, over one thousand children have had access to music education and facilities. Scoil Úna Naofa Violin and Orchestra Project was nominated for the award by the European Orchestra Federation. Silvina Munich of the judging panel congratulated the Dublin group:

I was familiar with projects at schools in disenfranchised urban and rural areas. Learning to play and listening to music let children dream of better futures. Music was the social elevator to lift them out to better days. I never heard of a project doing the same for adults (their parents in this case!). Simply playing music together fosters exchange among generations. It is brilliant and I am very proud to have played a tiny part in this. It involves everyone. Not just the school but the community. 

For more information, visit: http://www.stagnesmusiccrumlin.com/