Heritage meets Modern: The Mixture of Old and New in Modern Music – in Dresden, Germany, and Bodø, Norway. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Heritage meets Modern: The Mixture of Old and New in Modern Music – in Dresden, Germany, and Bodø, Norway.

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; Pedagogy and didactics; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

Based on recent experiences of good cooperation between our two schools, and on the continous need to develop our teaching methods, we would very much like to see this project sketch become a reality.

We call our music project “Heritage meets Modern – The mixture of Old and New in Modern Music (…)”. Through this project we would like to let pupils do workshops and concerts together, with traditional/classical and folk music on the one hand, modern music on the other hand, and as a third element the mixture of old and new music. This approach can lead to a better understanding of musical culture and a deeper appreciation of cultural differencies. For our cooperation, the musical traditions of the Sami people in Northern Scandinavia and the influences of Slavic music in Saxony are interesting, in addition to more clearly defined Norwegian and German music. All this is something we see in the light of the European Cultural Heritage Year 2018.

We wish to open the hearts and minds of our pupils to the possibilities of making music together, and the ability to do so, through experience, and thereby enhancing the levels of mutual understanding and the will and ability to share and develop creative processes together. Doing things together, in the international language of music, creates bonds and mutual understanding. We also want to achieve mutual learning of music didactics, from each other, for teachers taking part in the cooperation. Finally, we wish to open the eyes of our pupils for the bigger European education and job market in the music field.

We wish to let as many as 28 pupils from each school take part in the mobilities. Besides, we think there is a need of sending two training persons and two accompanying persons (all of them teachers) with the pupils, pupils, who will be over as well as under the age of 18. When visiting the other school, the visitors will take part in workshops with pupils and teachers at the host school. For Bodø videregående skole, this cooperation also means an enhancing of the already established status of the school as the only PASCH-school in Norway, with its focus on cooperation with Germany and the Goethe Institute. The PASCH-school status means that the school emphazises and seeks to develop German as a subject and Germany as an important country in different other subjects.

We think of the musical workshops themselves as concrete results, when it comes to doing things together, and thereby creating interdependence and a feeling of togetherness across our countries´ borders. Besides, we will let visitors and hosts give concerts together, at both places, for fellow pupils and also for wider audiences. This will contribute to the same as the workshops and also to the dissemination of some, at least, of the objectives that we hope to achieve. If personal bonds between Saxony and Nordland come into existence, which we think will happen, this will contribute even further to mutual understanding and the appreciation of cultural differencies.

With regard to the practical objective of opening our pupils´ eyes to the wider European job market for musicians, we plan to invite representatives of music institutions in both cities to come and inform both visitors and hosts about the job market in Nordland/Norway and Saxony/Germany, during the visits.

Through these different measures we think we will be able to approach the three topics addressed by our project. The musical concept of letting old and new music from our two regions meet, is an interesting contribution to the European Cultural Heritage Year. Through informing our pupils about the job possibilities for musicians in our two countries and regions we aim at pointing out some important labour market issues and thereby, possibly, contributing to reducing the problem of youth unemployment. Through planning and carrying out workshops and concerts we are quite sure that our music teachers at both schools will gain something in the field of pedagogy and didactics.

Through the two school years 2018/19 and 2019/20 we plan to carry out two weeks of workshops and concerts, one week in Dresden in March 2019 and one in Bodø in March 2020. Ahead of these weeks we will do careful planning, at preparatory meetings, which we think are necessary, and by telephone and E-mails.

During the project we aim at seeking new didatical approaches for us teachers. We will try to let our objectives be at the centre of the planning and the activities themselves. By finding music which fits our focus on “Heritage meets Modern”, by informing the pupils about the labour markets for musicians in both countries and by creating music together, we are sure that we will achieve our objectives to some degree, hopefully to a large degree, although this cannot be measured as easy as the temperature outside.

We also plan to disseminate our results at our schools and to wider audiences nationally and through the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 36416 Eur

Project Coordinator

Bodo videregaende skole & Country: NO

Project Partners

• Evangelisches Kreuzgymnasium