Music for Development

Bangladesh after Rabindranath’s vision of education. Shurer Dhara started life 15 years ago, as a school for teaching Rabindra Sangeet (the music of the most prodigious Bengali poet, musician, author, educationist and philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore) and gradually established itself as a centre for promoting the cultural life of the community. Since 2009 year, its remit has been expanded to include the fact that the convergence of art and people-centered civic and social objectives is inevitable and it helps to build vibrant and thriving communities. The project is named Music for Development: Integration of Deprived Children into Society.And Rezwana Choudhury Bannya is acting as the Team Leader of MfD. MfD's goal is empowerment of slum-dwelling children to effectively participate in the development of a knowledge-based society. It has recruited a small cohort of children from socially deprived families of the slum areas, preferably those demonstrating a temperamental leaning towards the arts, especially music, and gradually integrate them into the academic and cultural disciplines of Shurer Dhara (SD). MfD's approach is to prepare these children by giving purpose-designed lessons for a period of time and then place them in the same classes as the children from reasonably well-off families. It helps to bridge the gap of mental status as well as measured intelligence of children brought up in distinctly different social backgrounds. An environment of cognitive development are being created by giving lessons in music, art, language and other subjects of a newly-designed curriculum where all children can socially interact as partners thus increasing their motivation and ability to expand the sense of collective efficacy and building bridges or a bond between them. In the process they get the opportunity to learn the basic skills of future musicians or workers in the cultural sector. It is modeled after Rabindranath Tagore’s vision on learning and child-rearing and adopted to the needs of the 21st century. The values of arts education with the emphasis on music will help students develop as people of character and not just people with only a set of skills to earn a livelihood. The children from well-off families also have the opportunity of developing empathy for the kids from the socially deprived families. MfD's activities is to encourage others to replicate such projects and work in a network in many communities in Bangladesh and abroad.