Equal opportunities through music

To take musical discovery a step further, some families are giving their voices to the music! In 2022-23, a dozen orchestras set up family choirs to give parents the opportunity to sing together and accompany budding musicians on stage. This is the case in Beauvais, where the Orchestre Démos en Beauvaisis created a parents' choir in 2022. The 12 parents involved performed with the children on stage at the Philharmonie de Paris last June!

Beyond musical practice, the involvement of parents in the orchestra instills a dynamic of socialization in the territories. Backed by the Orchestre Démos Val de Sambre, a parents' association was created in September 2023, counting on the involvement of some fifteen parents. These parents took part in "parents' cafés" organized by the project coordinator and social referents outside rehearsal time, and set up the association to finance cultural outings with their children. The association will also be involved in a music school forum, to be held in March 2024, which will enable school directors to meet with families to facilitate the enrolment of young people wishing to pursue their musical practice.

More generally, parents' involvement can take various forms: workshops to build stage elements, preparation of dishes for orchestra picnics, car pooling, cake sales to finance the trip to the Philharmonie de Paris... Real support for orchestras!

Since 2021, Démos has been amplifying its approach to family inclusion by reaching out to their cultural heritages. Several experiments in collecting stories and music highlighting the singular stories of families have been carried out in orchestras, such as those of Lyon Métropole, Caen la mer, Thouarsais and Angers, among others.

In Caen, a project to collect the musical universe of families was implemented thanks to treasure boxes used to record songs around the theme of the sea. These boxes, circulating between the workshops and the children's homes, helped create a link between the families and the orchestra. A presentation of the collection was organized by inviting parents to workshop times in several towns in the Urban Community.

In the Thouarsais region, sound albums have been circulating since April between the Thouars workshop and each child's home, enabling them to record content with their parents (challenges proposed throughout the year) but also to discover recorded elements linked to the orchestra's repertoire and the group's work.

In Angers, a sound photo booth of family memories will be set up this season to collect stories around family memories. These stories will then be showcased in an exhibition.

These initiatives ensure that everyone is recognized in their own cultural identity, while building bridges between each facet of the cultural mosaic that makes up our contemporary societies. Children are thus supported in a positive, non-contradictory acceptance of the different cultural identities that coexist, whether they be different linguistic, musical, literary, culinary or clothing practices...

In tutti, in outings, within a choir, a parents' association or by telling their cultural story, these privileged moments around a shared artistic emotion help to strengthen intra-family bonds. In addition to making music part of everyday family life, Démos defends the idea that music should play an essential role in social life!