In mid-January, two directors of Sinfonía por el Perú traveled to Chile as part of our commitment to build bridges of exchange with allied programs and institutions related to us, which allow us to approach other organizations in the sector in neighboring countries, reinforcing the current inter-institutional alliances with which we can work in an articulated way in projects that seek to increase our positive impact around music as a tool for development.
Team of the school of the arts of the Teatro del Lago – Frutillar.
César Oré Rocca, member of the Board of Directors and associate in Symphony for Peru, and Gabriela Perona, executive director in the organization, traveled to Chile to participate in different activities with the aim of strengthening our network of alliances with organizations and public and private programs that work for social welfare through music. The institutional representatives were in Santiago de Chile where they met with the Foundation of Youth and Children’s Orchestras, to later go to the south of the country and visit the Teatro del Lago and the Ritcher House in Frutillar, ending the stay with a tour of the Educational Theater of the Arts of the southern commune of Panguipulli.
The meeting in Chile has allowed us to strengthen our institutional presence in the region, sharing spaces for training, exhibition of our work, the creation of upcoming projects and the generation of valuable knowledge that can be applied in our intervention processes at the level of nuclei and central casts.
These meetings also allow us to consolidate our network of allies to promote the artistic and social exchange of the beneficiaries and teachers of Sinfonía por el Perú, a need that starts by complementing and strengthening the work that is done for their musical and integral formation, where they can live new enriching experiences. This is how these efforts manage to scale the impact of music interventions for development.
Sectional rehearsal of the Panguipulli orchestra.
“Traveling and moving generates a nourishing experience for young musicians, and specifically, for the young people of the Central Casts, because it allows them to leave their place of comfort, like the theaters of Lima, and encourages them to relativize about what they have, where they are located, the good and beautiful, and also the bad. This is part of their learning process and the training proposal as a project that most seeks with these experiences is personal growth.” — César Oré.
Summer camp – Panguipulli.
Networks with organizations in Chile are born in our past Transforma 2022 residency. We were accompanied on that occasion, by Raúl Vergara from Global Leaders Program, and Pamela Caslow from the Amigos de Panguipulli Cultural Corporation. Under the perspective of generating a more articulated regional network between music for development programs in South America, the idea of establishing a new work route to learn about the ecosystem of orchestral and choral organizations in Chile germinates, having as its first stop the capital of the country, Santiago, where César Oré and Gabriela Perona held a fruitful meeting with the Foundation of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Chile (FOJI) —entity state that provides development opportunities for children and youth of the country through music—, to know its artistic programming and mechanism of operation. This meeting was also an opportunity to present Sinfonía por el Perú and its structure, objectives, advances, and the achievements obtained in these almost twelve years of organizational life.
Sinfonía por el Perú “Transforma” Residency 2022
Relive all the details of our artistic residency in Andahuaylillas – Cusco, here: https://sinfoniaporelperu.org/transforma-nuestra-residencia-artistica/
Peñalolén
Subsequently, the itinerary continued with a visit to the commune of Peñalolén, located in the southeast of Santiago, where they met with the directors of the Cultural Corporation of Peñalolen, made up of Gladys Sandoval, director of the Cultural Corporation of Peñalolén, Francisco Cabedo, coordinator, and Raúl Vergara, Director of International Programs in The Global Leaders Program.This meeting was an opportunity to learn about the community role that the association plays in the commune through its orchestral system, where, in addition, they exchange and generate processes with other types of artistic expressions beyond music, such as dance, theater and art exhibitions, dimensioning their impact on a larger scale that allows them to position themselves as an institution in cultural management and promotion. diversifying the programs they manage and achieving the integration of these same artistic manifestations.
Towards the southern region
Continuing with the programming of the trip, the spokesmen of Sinfonía moved to the south of Chile, in the region of Los Lagos, where the main focus of attention was concentrated: the city of Frutillar, recognized by UNESCO as the first Creative City of Chile. In it, they visited the Teatro del Lago, a recognized and important cultural foundation within the region that promotes exhibition and the cultural industry through the spaces of training, education, creation and innovation as components in its operating system. The meetings with the theater team, as well as the workshop school team, allowed to expose the detailed work of symphony for Peru and begin to dialogue about upcoming artistic exchange projects and institutional strengthening between both teams for this 2023.
The activity also allowed to learn about one of the strategies that the Teatro del Lago established to strengthen its teaching services: the Richter House, where different artistic experiences are taught for children and young people.
In this space, it was also possible to learn about the experience of a cultural institution in this region: The Musical Weeks of Frutillar, honoring the recognition acquired as a city that encourages creativity, an initiative based on 55 years of artistic tradition of the commune -and which is hosted by the Teatro de Lago-, offering a festival that takes place over the course of a week and a half of activities, of high professional level, which includes orchestras, casts and musical proposals. This makes them a local icon of articulation of all the most important musical initiatives in the country.
Panguipulli Arts Theatre.
Panguipulli and interview with Pamela Caslow
Finally, the last city visited was Panguipulli, also located in the southern region of Chile, which houses the Educational Theater of the Arts of Panguipulli, inaugurated at the end of October 2022.
In this same stay, our executive director conducted an interview with Pamela Caslow, who belongs to the Corporation of Friends of Panguipulli and is also artistic director of the Educational Theater. Thanks to the interview and the lived experience, we managed to learn about the system and the articulation with the community that the theater carries out with local schools and with public school teachers, being its main pillar and differential value. The corporation, which has a cultural center in the cultural area, has its own program called “Live the music”, which houses more than 1500 students in 22 educational centers.
One of the strategies that has allowed them to succeed lies in the creation of four working groups: a universal one, which addresses inclusion —especially of people with disabilities—, an artistic, a multicultural, and a youthful one.
In that sense, we consulted with Gabriela Perona about the working table that addresses the inclusion of people with disabilities through the design and execution of tools that allow them to integrate into musical activities:
“They (the theater) work on very interesting experiences in terms of articulation with work tables with the community to design their artistic or training programs, strengthening inclusion for people, for example, with hearing disabilities. The theater has acquired sensory backpacks so that people who have this type of disability can listen to a concert through vibrations. The backpacks have speakers that are connected to the microphones that are inside the Orchestra, and you can feel an inspiring experience that we bring to Peru to work on from our special education program.”
From Sinfonía por el Perú we want to congratulate these initiatives with allied organizations and referents, adding efforts that allow us to glimpse sociocultural cooperation projects, in the short and medium term, for the benefit of children and young people in the region and Latin America.
At the same time, we recognize the importance that arises from the exchange of initiatives that promote internships and the generation of international experiential experiences for the beneficiaries of the different programs, reinforcing the artistic line of each organization, and encouraging the search for greater experiences necessary for their training as musicians and as people who will become future agents of change for societies.
Sinfonía por el Perú is already preparing an inter-institutional cooperation agreement with the organizations visited to work on cultural and artistic exchange and the mutual enrichment of our work strategies.
Let’s keep working for the future of children through the transformative power of music.