East African Creative Music Campus (EACMC)
The East African Creative Music Campus (EACMC) began in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with a one day kick-off meeting where the 11 partners in the consortium met to plan the two year project on the 18th of February 2020. The meeting ran into a 10 day Business Development Workshop from the 19th to the 28th of February.
The workshop will be attended by directors, financial officers and administrators from Music Academies in Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
The capacity building workshop program will provide skills training in the development of business plans, grant writing, fundraising and advocacy to contribute to the development of the creative music industry in the region. In the second part of the business development program each partner country will stage an advocacy forum in the second half of 2020 to reach out to Stakeholders and Target Groups to promote the program.
The workshop is the first phase of the EACMC project. In July 2020 the second phase begins with the 15 day East African Creative Music Campus which will be staged in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Here the focus is on the EACMC teacher training program where 42 young musicians including fifteen female instrumentalists will continue their training. The Creative Music Campus has been developing an innovative new two year curriculum since 2010 for use in Music Academies in the region to provide professional training for aspiring young musicians. At the Campus the trainee music teachers will receive intensive training in the use of the second year of the curriculum with a group of 7 experienced facilitators from Africa and Germany who were also responsible for designing the curriculum.
A new feature of the campus in 20/21 is the addition of brass and woodwind instruments. 15 new trainees will begin studying the brass curriculum with a final concert in the last night in Addis featuring the EACMC African Big Band as well as performances from groups from the 5 countries taking part.
The curriculum uses modern teaching methods with modules, learning outcomes and credit points using the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) as the basis for its design. The content however focuses specifically on musical practice in the various countries involved. Through the training program the participants will be enabled and encouraged to create new curriculum specifically focussed on the musical cultures in their countries. The ultimate aim of the program is to create a network of academies throughout the continent using a complementary system which will enable them to exchange teachers and students, best practices and co-operate inter-regionally and internationally. Through the business development workshops the schools will gain practical experience and skills in how to manage their programs sustainably.
The project is co-funded for the next two years by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union and the Goethe-Institut through the Goethe-Institut in Ethiopia which is also a partner in the project.
