INCLUSIVE MUSIC HOLIDAY IN MECHELEN
For years; Benjamin Haemhouts, artistic director of Casco Phil, has been dreaming of an inclusive summer camp for children, where creativity in the broadest sense of the word would be central. We wanted to involve and integrate a number of underprivileged children into the group, through cooperation with a number of social partners. In the first week of July 2016, the second edition took place; doubling the number of participants, including the proportion of children from families in poverty. With the city of Mechelen as the theme, participants from different backgrounds lived out their creativity, played music and cooked together under the guidance of several inspiring chefs. As many as 25% of the participants were from socially vulnerable families.
The inclusive music holiday has become a regular feature of Musica’s projects and is repeated every summer.
SOCIAL TARIFFS FOR TALENT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES
The Musicafonds is also used to charge “social rates” for our music vacation in Antwerp and other talent development activities such as the international composition course SoundMine. We hope to reach several children and young people from underprivileged families
THE MUSICAL GIFT
During AlbaNova festival 2018, four visitors were given the opportunity to give the gift of a living room concert by an AlbaNova artist to someone who is unable to come to the festival (anymore). The following year, this initiative was repeated and again three AlbaNova visitors could share a piece of their festival experience. In June 2020, the Musicafonds surprised the final-year students of GO! atheneum Tongrorum with a musical send-off during their graduation. The initiative proved once again that music is a wonderful gift for all generations: in addition to the final-year students, we were also able to surprise several residential care centres, families at home and a facility for adults with disabilities with The Musical Gift.
