MusiChild® Publications represent an international innovation in the sustainability, protection, promotion, and imaginative development of shared cultural heritage, focusing especially on the European and Mediterranean musical heritage and its universal relevance in contemporary times.
Background - Aims:
MusiChild® began as a European-funded research project (2014-2017) among Euro-Mediterranean countries. C.C.R.S.M. was the designer and coordinator of the project. Intercultural thinking, courage, compassion, the conviction of our civilisation's worthiness, and the need for the cultivation of musical and cultural thinking led us to design a challenging journey empowering authenticity, integrity, and artistic excellence. The MusiChild® boat, with our organisation as the Cypriot captain, has been sailing with a crew of universities, educational networks, schools, professionals, children, and families across the Mediterranean Sea and Europe.
Upon completion of the Erasmus+ project with the same acronym, the MusiChild® project has expanded. It currently serves as a local, regional, and European heritage and music and music education innovation hub with the vision to become a high-impact musical growth and music audience development and engagement system signifier. Avra leads an international creative team for excellent, high-quality market products.
Honorable Recognitions:
The Cyprus National Agency for European Programmes:
- Invited the project to represent Cyprus at the European Erasmus+ Conference «Paths towards European Citizenship through Cultural Heritage», September 2018, Palermo, Italy.
- Selected the project as the best practice project from 30 years of Erasmus projects in Cyprus to represent Cyprus at the 30-Year Erasmus Programme Celebrations in May 2017, Bonn, Germany.
Currently, MusiChild® functions as an innovation hub to (a) creatively extend the European project’s findings, to deepen societies' understanding between European historical nations, cultures, and values, and (b) cultivate the engagement, sustainability, and re-imagination of shared cultural heritage for children's intercultural advancement and engagement in musical participation. MusiChild™ publications and actions are uniquely positioned to function as a bridge to connect (a) different cultures across boundaries upon a continuum of history, present, and future and (b) to cultivate musical skills, appreciation, creativity, and empathy through the language of music.
MusiChild® aims to bring positive change for early childhood music education in schools and at home across the EU countries for thousands of children, regardless of religious, cultural, financial, and other backgrounds. Our purpose is in alignment with the ECEC Council Recommendation and the European Pillar of Social Rights 11th principle, that all children have the right to affordable early childhood education and care of high quality and with the 5 Human Rights for Music of the IMC International Music Council of UNESCO (3 rights are specific for children). We want to enable children to:1
1. feel safer in this turbulent world,
2. dream, imagine, and create a richer world for them and their human co-fellows,
3. deepen their cultural understanding of our neighbouring nations,
4. develop healthy value systems relevant to our civilisations’ history, values, principles, and intercultural skills that allow them to function and thrive in contemporary diversity,
5. cultivate empathy, solidarity, and peaceful coexistence among people and cultures.
At this stage, we provide not only the measurable acquisition of skills, knowledge, values, and dispositions but also high-quality workshops and premium publications for home and social musical participation with excellent artistic illustrations and musical recordings created especially for each publication's innovation. Our needs analysis showed a significant gap and need for such music-centred, child-appropriate, and music-education-suitable audio-visual publications that 'update' our traditions and European shared musical heritage.