Prize won for educational work

For the second time in two years we have been awarded an honoured mention at the prestigious competition "Kinder zum Olymp" (Children to the Olympus) for our educational work in 2006. We are the only independent music group ever to have achieved that. I'm very proud of the work we have done. We have been added to the official list and you can check out some more pictures and details (all in German, sorry) here and here.

Looking through the list of who won the last two years, I didn't find anything similar to what we do. Probably we are mad, it's an incredible amount of work! In order to have scenes from operas that kids can safely sing, we need to cruise through the entire opera repertoire and then write a new show to put all of them together in a logical order. It gives the kids a sense of achievement when they get to perform with real opera singers on a real stage. From the feedback we got it's also a huge form of encourgement to the kids. My two favourite feedbacks from those workshops were: 1) 'I now believe that I can achieve everything that I want to.' - (and that came from a group of kids with incredibly low self esteem), and 2) in answer to the question of the National Television interview 'what is the difference between singing your favourite pop songs at home and opera at this workshop?', the boy looked at the lady slightly bewildered and said 'We just sing higher.'

All of this puts me in the right mood to go out an join the S&B London for the international knitting in public day. So, everyone now - don't sit behind your computer, go out and get knitting!