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Sing Me In: Collective singing in the integration process of young migrants
Start date: Oct 1, 2016, End date: Sep 30, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Some young people are confronted with higher risk of exclusion due to their socio-economic origin, because of the neighbourhood they live in, because of migration backgrounds, etc. As stated in the Paris declaration, increasing migration due to growing number of refugees and their inclusion in society is a European issue.The “Sing Me In” project aims at providing children and youth choir conductors and music teachers with pedagogical approaches and tools that allow collective singing activities to play a positive role in the integration process of young people in risk of exclusion.During the last international conference of the European Choral Association - Europa Cantat, dedicated to Inclusion (Nov. 2015), we had presentations and discussion groups on the topic. A number of choral youth organisations expressed their need for structured tools to address the issues at hand: the youth organisations globally share the same challenges and are only partially aware of the solutions developed in the other European countries. Yet, most organisations do not have the resources to research and develop solutions at the national level, and it would likely lead to duplicating the effort in each country. As a European network with a long-standing experience in cooperation projects, we decided to address these needs at the European level, to ensure that the whole sector and as many young targets as possible can benefit from it in Europe.The project gathers 11 musical organisations involved in youth work in 10 countries including Turkey and Lebanon. They will join forces and use their extensive networks to collect good practices related to the use of collective singing in the process of inclusion of young migrants in their respective professional and geographical areas.The project will evaluate the existing experience to extract best practices, and use this basis to collectively develop innovative pedagogical contents. The main outputs of the project will thus be three handbooks and a website targeting children and youth choir conductors and music teachers: repertoire tips, pitfalls to avoid, examples of good practices, communication strategies, funding tips, guidelines for singers’ preparation, etc. The output will be available in 11 languages to allow for efficient dissemination and guarantee a maximum impact across the youth worker community.The three handbooks and the website will be articulated around different targets and type of needs: 1) Working with young refugees in their environment (refugee camp or accommodation) 2) Including young people with migrant background in existing choirs 3) Working in a school environmentAnother innovative tool will be the collection and edition of repertoire reflecting the migrant's cultural background to allow for musical exchange between the young singers, accompanied with video sources, sound files, transliteration and translations, pronunciation files to help conductors implement inclusion using relevant material.We will set up a dedicated multilingual website gathering the produced material (handbooks, repertoire), allowing to present and link to additional resources such as video files, images, useful websites, scientific research, etc.To ensure an efficient dissemination, we will organise a cycle of international and national multiplier events inserted in training events and conferences gathering our target groups across Europe. This events will be the opportunity to reach out to active practitioners that will in turn use and spread the methods and output further.If we are to believe anthropology, the human voice was likely amongst the first instruments used by humans to produce music together and it helped members of a group to develop their skills, share emotions, organise common life and provide a sense of belonging. The “Sing Me In” project thus rely on a multi millenary tradition to look into the future and offer innovative and effective tools to help young people to meet without prejudices, acquire skills and enter a productive and balanced relation with the community.

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