The Greenhorn Community Music Project Vision

Goals

The participants in the Greenhorn Community Music Project wish to build and sustain inter-generational equity through creative collaboration. Greenhorn Community Music Project is an after-school workshop designed to meet the needs of new music learners. Creative elements currently include music, dance, costuming and other performance-based activities. The vision is to remove barriers that young and amateur musicians face so that they can more fully participate and co-develop local culture.

History

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Members of the Open Air Orchestra Society, largely composed of amateur performers in The Carnival Band, called for the society to be more involved in supporting youth in musical endeavours. At the society’s AGM in November 2013, members voted to donate $1000 to Britannia Secondary to help cover costs for the Grade 11/12 band trip to Cuba. Some might say that the involvement of a fourteen-year-old Indigenous boy named Marlo Mason is the true inspiration for both the society’s donation and for band members directing more energy toward encouraging for youth to explore musical creation and collaboration. While the band has consistently attracted young performers, the timing of Monday evening rehearsals (7:30pm-10pm) present a barrier for younger players. A clear solution is to hold specific workshops at a time and in a location that amateur musicians of all ages can attend

Objectives

All collaborators and community participants will endeavour to assist young/amateur performers and professional musicians in developing a greater creative capacity through workshops and performances. The Greenhorn Community Music Project not only intends to foster creative engagement by the community but also to blur the line between performer and audience. We aim to explore creative collaboration across disciplines, cultures, generations, and skill levels while giving participants the tools and the confidence to more effectively collaborate. Through interactions with professional musicians, youth performers and amateur performers, we also hope to generate and perform a number of new compositions. The project also intends to initiate a cascade effect within the community, with people passing on learned skills to others, who do the same and thereby empower people to realize that they do not need to be ‘qualified’ or ‘special’ to create or participate in the generation of their own culture.