Music to Life Erasmus Project

Project Title

Music to Life

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Music to Life was a KA2 Erasmus+ project, involving St. Stanislav’s Institution, Ljubljana and Music Conservatory Frederic Chopin, Krakow. Within St. Stanislav’s the Diocesan Classical Gymnasium and the Music School were active in the project.

During the phase of application, we wanted to emphasise the importance of music to our European cultural and art heritage. We were aiming to bolster the somewhat neglected field in the course of general education. By the end of the project we have succeeded in this endeavour by improving and upgrading the array of supplementary activities. An even greater benefit arose from the – more active than anticipated – participation of our Music School. We achieved a greater cohesion and cooperation within our institution and the Music School gained both professional capacities as well as advanced in their ability to participate in the international environment.

Similarly, the benefits of the Polish partner were substantial when it comes to their capacity for international cooperation. For them it was the first time they participated in any such project. The benefited greatly from the aid of InERD (Institute for Education Research and Development), operating within St. Stanislav’s. InERD, being among other things the project office, tended to the implementation of project management trainings, did the project monitoring and provided logistical and administrative support when needed.

Professionally, active participants in the project were music pedagogues, that remain in contact even now, after the conclusion of the project. The main idea was the sharing of good practices and motivating the youth to actively participate in various (extracurricular) activities. Having more skills and experience the Slovenian partner mentored the Polish in the segment of choirs and the Polish partner mentored the Slovenian one in the field of orchestra and individual instrument instruction.

A large part of the project leaned against the planned larger mobilities including students. Teachers met to plan the project during the planned transnational meetings and further improved their professional profiles in joint staff training events (including job shadowing and work placement assignments). The core of the project would be however represented by the 3 conducted student mobilities out of the 4 planned. Unfortunately, the last strand of mobility was impossible due to the COVID situation, however the Polish partner unable to travel almost justified the entire amount of the travel and subsistence grant in the first student mobility. The Slovenian partner, however, managed to use the grant in a way that enabled more than 300 % of the planned mobilities. Though the last part of the project (including virtual meetings for evaluation) was not conducted according to plan, we believe that we managed to fulfill all of the planned objectives.

In the course of the project (and mobilities in particular) we strived for students to take a role – as active as possible. As among the project objectives was also the improvement of their (transversal) skills, we placed much emphasis on involving them in activities augmenting their communication, presentation, organisation … skills.
Professors included in the project shared their good practices and worked together on developing a system enabling them to separately prepare the students for a joint performance (both choir and orchestra). Organisationally and professionally we made some advances, we have developed approaches and honed our skills and we are ready to disseminate this even after the project.

In the course of the 3 student mobilities over 20 larger and smaller concerts and performances were held. It would be remiss, however, not to mention the largest and technically most demanding event. During an exchange in Ljubljana, joint choirs and orchestras performed in front of a sold out largest national concert venue for classical music – Gallus Hall of Cankarjev dom (with 1.700 seats). A live streaming of the event with professional sound and 6 cameras was also organised on YT and followed by an additional 300 viewers. The central piece of the concert – Te Deum of Anton Bruckner was later viewed 30.000 times on YT. And a great anecdotical testament to the quality of the performance was provided inadvertently by the YT algorithms. Shortly after streaming ended the recording was pulled for the reason of 2 outstanding automatic copyright claims. YT recognised parts of the concert as the performance of Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and parts as Corydon Singers.

The project represents a stepping stone towards future cooperation. Project partners are already coordinating the potential future project with an enlarged partnership and are looking for various other ways to disseminate the project results further.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 69450 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zavod sv. Stanislava & Country: SI

Project Partners

• Panstwowa Ogolnoksztalcaca Szkola Muzyczna II stopnia im. F. Chopina