music as an invitation phase 2 started in August 2024. I decided to wait for the return of school (August in Norway and Brazil, September in the UK) to start the recruitment for participants.
The plan was to work with teenage girls (13 – 16 years old) in this second phase of the project.
I firstly tried to recruit teenage girl participants schools and private piano teachers from Norway, Brazil and the UK, then through NGOs that run programmes of activities and development for girls. I did get some responses from piano students, whose teachers passed on my invitation. But, the other forms of contact were quite unsuccessful.
Repeatedly I heard, as response from their tutors: “they are just so busy…”. Also, one schoolteacher said: “We get a lot of questions like yours to our school”.
That made me reflect… could I be offering something that they actually do not need, at least not right now?
When I was designing this project, I decided to work with teenage girls as one of the targeted participants, because of the disparity to
access to education and opportunities for talent development which still exists between boys and girls.
Considering that indeed I tried to contact participants from a wide range of places and socio-economic backgrounds, and in all these contexts the girls were already busy with activities, what can we offer then to effectively give young girls tools for development and empowerment?
At the end, most of the girls who ended up really taking part in the project were the ones recommended by friends. And, in this process, I ended up opening up the geographical frame of the project to included some friends from France as well.
I had then, finally in November 2025, a group of 6 girls from Brazil, Norway, the UK, and France.
In the first year, I had already seeing the weight of interpersonal relationships in a collaborative creative music experience with volunteer participants.
And, here we are once again, seeing music and friendship walking hand by hand.