…a programme of the GeyserHaus e.V. (Leipzig) social and cultural centre

“Music makes you smart” is the title of a series of projects the GeyserHaus e.V. social and cultural centre in the German city of Leipzig has developed and has been offering to children, teenagers, and adults since 2008. They are intended to offer an access to musical education for the socially deprived in particular. Based on the insight of Berlin musicologist Hans-Günther Bastians, who postulates that making music together is always at the same time also a learning process, we give many people from all social backgrounds the opportunity to make music themselves. The following are only some examples of the constituent projects we offer free of charge to our participants in pursuit of this aim:

• Family Orchestra
The Family Orchestra was founded in February 2018 and is open to amateur musicians of all ages under the directorship of Bernd Brückner (Muldenthal music school). This free-of-charge project teams up people of all ages and with varying musical skills.

• Scholarship programme
As part of an ongoing cooperation with the “Bürger für Leipzig (Citizens for Leipzig)“ Foundation, GeyserHaus e.V. has been offering 25 children from socially deprived families the opportunity to receive vocal or instrument coaching for at least one year free of charge. Active fundraising and a dedicated sponsor programme has allowed us to offer long-term support to all of our scholarship recipients to date. More than 200 one-year scholarships have been awarded.

• Leipzig makes music
Nine participating social-cultural centres have come together to develop a selection of participatory events under the umbrella of “Leipzig Makes Music”, with a new theme selected every year. The Leipzig social and cultural alliance targets these events at children and teenagers particularly, encouraging them to engage in music and related genres, and to explore creatively both contemporary and traditional art formats.

• Taking Music to after-school care!
This project has once again received support from the Ministry for Academic Affairs and the Arts of the State of Saxony for 2017. The project is founded on our experience of cooperating with schools and crèches in previous projects (kindergarten orchestra, Music to the Crèche!, Music for Everyone!). Every week, four primary schools in the Eutritzsch and Möckern districts of Leipzig host a team of one dance and one music educator each as part of their after-school care programme. The educators structure the hour they spend with the children around singing, live music, rhythm exercises and dance and movement activities.

Another important aim of ours is making sure that engagement in music is made an enduring element of after-school care, and we do this by offering a programme of training seminars throughout the year for child care workers covering methods from music and dance education. To reach children from socially deprived families in particular, participation in the lessons is free of charge. Our partner primary school in Möckern in particular requires support, as many of the attending children hail from educationally deprived families and suffer various exclusionary factors.

The musical instruments provided by the Hans Thomann Foundation are administered by the in-house GeygerHaus e.V. music schools and made available to individual projects on a needs basis. In doing so, we particularly focus on our work with chrèches and schools, which frequently do not have sufficient numbers of instruments at their disposal.