El Sistema-New York City

For as long as I can remember, about twice a year reports and surveys come out informing us yet again
how divided a society Scotland is. They remind us that most of the population is wealthier, healthier and living longer than ever before; and that our principal cities are bustling with life and creativity; but then they zoom in on the stubborn persistence of poverty and deprivation among a significant minority of the population. The surveys vary in focus. Quite often they concentrate on the criminality that flows
consequentially from these communities ofdeprivation, and we’ll be told that this or that Scottish postcode is the murder capital of Europe or has the highest incidence of heroin dependence and
drug-related violence.

Recently, the focus has been mainly on health and life expectancy. These are the surveys I find the most depressing. They remind us that Scotland is the sick man of Europe, and ‘man’s’ the right word here,
because if you are a male living in certain Scottish postcodes you are unlikely to live past 63. We know
that in these neighbourhoods more than half the population smokes – compared with 25% of Scotland’s
average population – that alcohol abuse admissions to hospital are far above the national average.
We know that cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, drug overdose and suicide eat away at life, because
multiple deprivation is the universal experience. In one postcode little more than a mile away from
Glasgow’s vibrant city centre, 44% of the population are on incapacity benefit; 37% live in workless
households; and 30% of homes are occupied by a lone parent.

To be fair to them, no recent British government has been complacent about the problem, not excluding
the administrations in Scotland since we got our own parliament back. You might even say they’ve been obsessed with the problem of this persistent underworld of misery that disfigures our nation.
In trying to cure it they have spent a lot of money. They have tried to transform the physical environment in which the deprived live. They have improved their schools. They have worked hard to find them jobs. But the problem persists. It is true that individuals of talent and energy are sometimes lucky enough to find teachers or social workers who help them escape the cycle of deprivation. Sadly, for most people locked into these communities of mutually reinforcing deprivations their only prospect is an unhealthy life and an early death. We need new ideas if we are going to break into this cycle of despair. We need to experiment with different approaches. And we need to look at what other countries do and learn from them.

That’s why I am going to visit Venezuela for a week in February. Thirty years ago, Venezuela – in which 3 out of 4 children were living in terrible poverty – decided that they would use music as an instrument of social transformation. They would go into barrios and townships and form children’s and juveniles’ orchestras, starting them off at the age of three. They weren’t particularly interested in creating musicians, but they did want to change lives. In fact, they have done both. Simon Rattle says that what is happening in Venezuela is the most important thing in classical music in the world. Not only has it changed lives and transformed communities, it has made classical musicians out of half-a-million young Venezuelans, many of whom were heading for a violent life and an early death.

Can we learn something from them and bring it back to Scotland? That is what I am hoping. I know there are no quick fixes in this business, but might it not be that through the transformational power of music, and the skill needed to create it, we might just discover a way of transforming those
communities of despair into communities of joy and hope? I think it’s worth a visit to Venezuela to find out.
Source:

http://www.scottisharts.org.uk/resources/publications/IB/pdf/NE1%20ib%20Feb-March%2006.pdf