Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft - Das internationale Forum der Deutschen Bank - 1. Barýþ Ýcin Müzik

The Barış İcin Müzik (Music for Peace) is a remarkable intervention in Edirnekapi, one of Istanbul’s most disadvantaged inner-city neighbourhoods, that brings free musical education to local school children from the ages of 7 to 14 and has realised a new facility for musical training and performance for talented teenagers at the heart of their community.

By creatively adapting the unused basement of the local state school into a bright and airy space where children spend after-school hours playing accordions, learning composition, repairing instruments, performing and eating together, the initiative performs an important social as well as cultural function for the 250 children who have taken part since its inception in 2005. Rather than returning to an empty home or spending time on the city’s streets, young boys and girls of different ages and backgrounds spend time with dedicated volunteer musicians and parents in an environment which has an energising effect on anyone who visits.

Apart from its undoubted social impact on the children and their families – many recent immigrants from poorer regions in Turkey – the project constitutes a commitment to an inner-city area that is suffering from disinvestment and increasing deprivation. The design and construction of a new three-storey building with music rooms and a 90-seat performance space in the tight-knit urban fabric of Edirnekapi will change local perceptions about the neighbourhood, ensuring that young people will stay in the area rather than move away to pursue their
musical talents.

The project is an innovative investment in human and social capital, which uses arts and culture in a highly pragmatic and unsentimental way to promote urban regeneration in an area of Istanbul that most needs it. The jury was highly impressed by the vision and generosity of Mehmet Selim Baki, the project’s sponsor, the palpable impact on the children’s musical and social skills, the clear messages that it gives for inner-city living and the potential for the project to act as model for similar initiatives in other urban areas across the globe.

http://siddetekarsimuzik.org/