Sing for your soul – Music for social change Manual has been produced during 38th YEU Convention held in the summer of 2019 in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Banja Luka) and Slovenia (Crnomelj) and hosted by YEU Member Organisations Cerebra and MC BIT.
The vision behind the programme “Sing for your soul – Music for Change” was to inspire young people in order to work on themselves and their self-empowerment while, at the same time, learning about others through music, singing and interacting with other communities with the purpose to make a change. The main idea of this project was to empower people to be strong and make them understand that each one of us can contribute to societal development in their own way.
“Sing for Your Soul” which also served as the 38th YEU Convention was a project envisaged to cover two aspects of a young person’s development:
1. Personal: empowerment of young person’s self and multidimensional identity through vocal development and learning about oneself through singing
2. Societal: interaction with “others” (other cultures, ethnicities, origins, backgrounds) and their intersectionality through intercultural learning and understanding how to co-exist/live together.
In “Sing for Your Soul – Music for Change” we wanted to focus on the empowerment of young people’s voices.
Voice is a deep part of who you are. Voice is an essential part of communication. Voice is ever-evolving. Being in touch with your own authentic voice is something many people struggle with. They say life is a learning process, yet sometimes we have difficulty expressing ourselves. Whether it be not speaking up in a work meeting, to objecting to an idea, or miscommunication, due to lack of clarity, we sometimes sell ourselves short.
Music is a part of all of us: it allows us to connect across cultures, upbringings, and with our own authentic voice. Music is bringing us closer to others but also ourselves. Everybody has a unique voice but we are very often discouraged from using it with the explanation that we are not talented enough, for singing for example.
During 38th Convention we have also created two videos:
– the musical approach in non-formal education
– song that participants developed during the project
The project has been supported by the European Youth Foundation of Council of Europe.
