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El Sistema in Australia: Risk, aspiration and promise

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Louise Godwin

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 El Sistema in Australia: Risk, aspiration and promise

ABSTRACT

This article examines the phenomenon of Sistema-inspired programs in Australia as social

interventions aimed at children at-risk. Commencing with an overview of how disadvantage is
understood, personal stories gathered through the author’s practice within a Sistema-inspired
program illustrate and provide context for an exploration of the tensions, assumptions and
ambiguities associated with El Sistema in Australia. The article argues that the programs have
value when conceived as transitional, short-term interventions directed toward supporting the
settlement of members of recently arrived communities. However, when conceived as long-
term interventions for children, particularly when aimed at addressing significant
disadvantage and supporting children at-risk, the programs are problematic. The article
concludes that a strengths-based framework is required if we are to avoid replicating deficit
models that reinforce exclusionary practices and sustain structures of disadvantage and
privilege.

Keywords: El Sistema; Sistema-inspired; at-risk; social justice; deficit discourse

INTRODUCTION

Indigenous Australian opera singer and social activist in music, Deborah Cheetham,
commented in a 2017 conference keynote address that “a song is never just a song.”1 These
words were delivered while narrating her decision to refuse an invitation to sing Australia’s
National Anthem Advance Australia Fair at a major sporting event. Cheetham’s words
highlight that everything we do in music—the repertoire or genre we choose, the traditions
and practices we follow, the musicians with whom we choose to make music, the identity we
see in (or impose upon) those around us, the identity we choose to attribute to ourselves—are
actions which impact upon others. The people, music, traditions, practices, genres and
institutions we choose to privilege in our actions through music-making are conscious
decisions with rippling repercussions.

1
Author’s personal notes taken during Deborah Cheetham’s keynote address at the Australian Society for Music
Education Conference in Melbourne, Australia, 13-15 July 2017.

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In this article, I interrogate some tensions, assumptions and ambiguities associated with El
Sistema in Australia, drawing on my past insider experience as a program manager of a
Sistema-inspired program. From a personal perspective, I am disquieted by the adoption of
the philosophy and approach of El Sistema in Australia and unsettled by assumptions about
the value of classical or Western art music. I am disturbed by the privileging of the orchestra
as a model tool for socio-artistic intervention flying under the flag of social justice and
change. As my reading in this area deepens, I recognise that I do not stand alone. There are
other practitioners and researchers, speaking from the Sistema-inspired sphere, concerned by
the adoption, too often uncritical, of the salvation narrative of El Sistema (Baker, 2014, p.
105) for the purpose of social justice and change.

Allan (2010) raises concern with the deficit profiling of, supposedly, disadvantaged
populations in Scotland (p. 118), with Dobson (2016) providing insider observations of the
proliferation of El Sistema program rhetoric within a program in the United Kingdom.
Rosabal-Coto (2016), a colonized researcher and educator in Costa Rica, adopts a
postcolonial stance to warn of problematic social practices, arising from colonialism, that are
founded on a belief in “Western art music practices as a way to save the masses” (p. 159).
From the perspective of El Sistema Sweden, a progressive multi-cultural Sistema-inspired
model, Bergman, Lindgren and Saether (2016) discuss the dichotomous challenges of
integration. Given the international expansion of Sistema-inspired programs, more scrutiny is
warranted, particularly in the light of the deepening of research into El Sistema in Venezuela
(Alemán et al., 2017, Baker & Frega, 2018, Baker, 2014) auguring the likely presence of
similar issues in the Sistema-inspired field.

My decision to scrutinise some complexities associated with El Sistema in Australia is

inspired by Reay’s (2012) strike at the neoliberal appropriation of social justice, choice and
diversity, and her call to individuals and organisations concerned with inequality and injustice
to examine their actions and motivations. Reay summons us to examine whether our actions
are directed at building a “socially just future” (p. 596) or whether our efforts work
“discursively to sanction and exacerbate inequalities” (p. 592). By turning an inward gaze, we
might, as Land (2015) advocates, interrogate our complicity and work toward achieving true
“practice of solidarity” through aligning our interests and intentions with those of the people
we wish to support (p. 249).

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 AIM, METHODOLOGY AND STANDPOINT

The aim of this article is to contribute to an expanding conversation about the framework
upon which we build our actions in music. The words sit within the landscape of my doctoral
research study investigating professional classical musicians’ experiences in other-than-
classical music framed by the notion of third space (Bhabha, 1994). This phenomenological
study seeks to understand motivations—including issues of social justice—and reveal the
learning and identity work taking place within this space. Adopting a research praxis of self-
reflection, my doctoral dissertation incorporates a series of autoethnographic writings—taking
the form of journal entries, conference papers and articles—that divulge my own
positionality, reflect upon my own personal beliefs, biases and assumptions, and scrutinise my
personal standpoint.

I am an educated, privileged, non-Indigenous, female, born in Australia. Three of my

grandparents were born overseas, and one was first-generation born in Australia. As part of
the reframing that occurs for so many Australians, my family has distanced itself from the
violence of Australia’s colonial history. Until now: my own daughters, both millennials, are
our first generation living in the awareness and acceptance of their role and complicity in
Australia’s evolving history. Where do I stand within this particular narrative? This is a
fraught discussion, certainly beyond the scope of this article, however I find myself working
towards the standpoint of my daughters: accepting my complicity, acknowledging my
privilege and recognising that my actions (good and bad) make a difference.

This standpoint has been galvanized by a movement in Australia to replace the deficit model
used to frame Indigenous peoples as ‘at-risk’ or ‘high risk’ with a strength-based approach to
supporting and enabling Indigenous communities. The framing of others as at-risk echoes the
El Sistema narrative, encapsulated in Abreu’s own words of the poor child transformed
through music (cited in Fink, 2016). This deficit narrative continues in Booth’s (2011)
archetypal statements of transformation and redemption, and El Sistema’s own narrative of
“rescuing children and young people from an empty, disorientated, and deviant youth”
(Baker, 2014, p. 105). Meanwhile, like the intentionally mistold colonial stories of Australia’s
first nation people (Pascoe, 2014), stories of El Sistema are told and retold by those of us
unwilling to seek and recognise the truth. In my search for truthful understanding, I have
borrowed the conjuring of a link between Sistema-inspired programs and children ‘at-risk’.

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Risk provides a lens through which I have focused my reflections, addressed a gap in local
research, and built an argument for a strengths-based framework.

As a disclaimer, this article should not be read as a criticism of the quality of music education
being delivered through Sistema-inspired programs in Australia. In my own experience, I
have observed dedicated and talented professional classical musicians, as teaching artists,
working collaboratively in a self-reflexive manner to develop ensemble-based pedagogies and
practices, with sincere efforts to develop culturally-sensitive repertoire. Nor should this article
be read as directed at a single program: the issues discussed may or may not exist in
programs, and where they do, efforts may well be underway to address them. Rather, in the
interests of the overarching project of social justice, I am questioning the association of these
programs with the El Sistema brand, and calling on all of us involved to confront the
complexities of our work in music and social change.

SISTEMA-INSPIRED PROGRAMS IN AUSTRALIA

There are four music education programs currently operating in Australia that identify as
Sistema-inspired. Two programs are run by professional state symphony orchestras, and
two—both with historical links to Sistema Australia (2018)—are independent programs.
Three of these programs operate out-of-school, with participation on an opt-in basis. At this
point, one of the independent programs is relatively new and has not been included in the
following brief overview. Reflecting the small presence of El Sistema in Australia, two
journal articles speak directly to these programs. Osborne, McPherson, Faulkner, Davidson
and Barrett (2015) present findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project
Grant examining the non-musical outcomes for primary school students involved in Sistema-
inspired music programs delivered by a state symphony orchestra and an independent
program. Watson (2016) provides a personal reflection on a Sistema-inspired program run by
a state symphony orchestra.

The discussion presented in this article draws on my 12-month experience within one of the
opt-in Sistema-inspired programs located within a diverse community characterised by a mix
of lower socioeconomic status, disadvantaged, culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD)
and recently arrived, refugee or asylum seeker populations. This program was established in

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response to a complex range of factors that were negatively affecting school engagement and
academic achievement for students in a state primary school.

Sistema-inspired programs and ‘at-risk’ children

You might have heard of it. The Venezuelan music program that took children out of the slums
and created an orchestra. I have used these words—or similar words—when talking about
Sistema-inspired programs in Australia. In this way, I have acted to affirm a narrative of
transformation through music, advocating the use of classical music and the orchestra as an
intervention targeted at children considered to be at-risk. In doing so I have subscribed to El
Sistema’s powerful narrative, using it to frame interventions through music in Australia.

El Sistema’s narrative seduces those of us who are educated and employed within the
institution of classical music. The simplicity of the genesis story captures our intentions and
desire to take personal action to address the structural issues in society that reinforce
disadvantage. Booth’s (2013) words inspire us to believe in El Sistema’s success in
redirecting of lives “from the ravages of poverty into constructive citizenship” (p. 17). And
when we stand on the precipice, facing the possibility that we are simply acting out middle
class “boundary-drawing” (Bull, 2016, p. 125) and working to sustain and reinforce
inequality, El Sistema takes us by the hand and reassures us that we are making a difference.

The program helps underserved communities and at-risk children. A memory enters my head.
I’m driving home in the early weeks of my time with the program, talking on the phone to one
of my oldest friends: we’ve known each other since primary school. Lizzie is a primary
school art teacher who is currently working in a small, inner suburban Catholic primary
school that serves a diverse, lower socio-economic community. My phone is on hands free,
and Lizzie has momentarily misheard the word ‘underserved’. It’s not one we use here in
Australia, and her mistake piques our shared dark humour and then, almost as quickly,
exposes the way in which I have appropriated the language of El Sistema. “What does this
mean?”, she asks me. Lizzie knows these underserved children better than I do. Even though
she doesn’t say it, I know there is something about this word, and the language enfolding it,
that rests uneasily with her. Is it the collective label, the generalisation, or the facile ease with
which I use the word? Or is it the subtle tone that characterises the self-congratulatory work

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of the privileged when working with those they deem less so? I am unsettled, resolving to
avoid this word in future, and to better scrutinise my use of deficit-discourse language.

Defining ‘at-risk’

At-risk denotes a set of presumed cause-effect dynamics that place an individual child
or adolescent in danger of future negative outcomes. At-risk designates a situation that
is not necessarily current (although we sometimes use the term in that sense too) but can
be anticipated in the absence of intervention. (McWhirter et al., 2012, p. 6)

In Australia, at-risk status is often based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Socio-
Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) generated through data collected through a nation-wide
census undertaken every five years. This tool consists of four indexes that measure socio-
economic advantage and disadvantage defined broadly as “people's access to material and
social resources, and their ability to participate in society” (Australian Bureau of Statistics,
2011a). One of these indexes, the Australian Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage
(IRSD) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011b) is used to identify low socio-economic status
geographic areas in order to target interventions aimed at children at-risk. The IRSD index
measures relative disadvantage using a set of variables that identify particular markers of
disadvantage. These markers include poor English language competency; low level of
education attainment; employment in low skill profession; unemployment status; separated or
divorced marital status; single parent family; absence of car ownership or Internet connection;
living in a house requiring one or more additional bedrooms, and low income (Australian
Bureau of Statistics, 2011c). The results provide a score that positions the geographic area on
a scale from most disadvantaged to least disadvantaged. It is not unusual for membership of a
CALD community or status as recently arrived migrants and refugees to be added to this mix
as a means of reading and understanding disadvantage.

It is important to flag that the Australian Bureau of Statistics advocates caution in the use of
the indexes, highlighting that the “indexes reflect the socio-economic wellbeing of an area,
rather than that of individuals” (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011d). This disclaimer
suggests that living in a lower socio-economic geographic area does not automatically mean
that an individual is disadvantaged. Demographic mapping tools, such as Social Atlas
(Atlas.id, 2018) are also used to achieve a more nuanced reading of census data.

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What do we know about the children participating in Sistema-inspired programs?

In Australia, we assume more than we know about the children participating in Sistema-
inspired programs and their risk status. We know that the Sistema-inspired programs are
delivered in geographic areas assessed as in the lowest scoring percentile (3-8%) of the
SEIFA scale, and assume that the IRSD index markers of disadvantage can be applied to
these children. It is not unreasonable to further assume that a percentage of children living in
these areas will experience some form of disadvantage that may place them at-risk either
currently or in the future. Osborne et al. (2015) suggest, based on the socio-economic status
of the geographic areas in which two of the Australian Sistema-inspired programs are located,
this disadvantage may be associated with generational poverty and lack of education or
educational aspiration; membership of a CALD population, or recently arrived refugee or
asylum seeker status. Disadvantage may also combine with current learning or behavioural
difficulties, under-performance, school disengagement, and the possibility of confronting
future problems in adolescence and early adulthood. Risk and disadvantaged experienced by
individual participants in Sistema-inspired programs is, therefore, presumed according to
postcode.

As the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggests, postcode is a crude tool for determining
disadvantage, and an even cruder tool for assuming levels of disadvantage characterising
participants in Sistema-inspired programs, particularly out-of-school, opt-in programs. A
recent study of El Sistema in Venezuela (Alemán et al., 2017) betrays the flawed assumptions
made when using population data to generalise disadvantage. The study, commissioned by the
Inter-American Development Bank, found that 46.5% of children living in geographic areas
in Venezuela targeted for El Sistema programs lived in households with incomes assessed as
below a poverty line of US$4 per day, however only 16.7% of the children in the El Sistema
program represent this demographic. This study reinforces Baker’s (2014) questioning of El
Sistema’s supposed success in targeting children of more profound disadvantage, and his
drawing of attention to early evidence that the same problem may be transposed to Sistema-
inspired programs, particular those offered as an out-of-school or opt-in program.

Risk and membership of a culturally and linguistically diverse population

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SEIFA population data tells us that, across the geographic areas in which the three Sistema-
inspired programs are located in Australia, the percentages of people born overseas of non-
English speaking backgrounds range from 18.1% to 31.6%. Digging a bit deeper, the SEIFA
data tells us that each of the three programs is located in a geographic area characterised by a
different set of dominant CALD populations: (1) India and China; (2) Philippines and India;
and (3) Iraq and Turkey. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics has already cautioned us, we
cannot read this demographic data as necessarily reflecting the demographic of the Sistema-
inspired programs. Turning to available information about the three programs, it appears that
each does indeed attract high numbers of children from CALD communities. In two instances,
high participation numbers by children of particular cultural heritage infer dominant cultural
patterns: children of Karen heritage in the case of one program, and children of Turkish and
Assyrian-Chaldean heritage in the case of another. We can assume that these families are
recently arrived in Australia with refugee or asylum seeker status, and therefore considered
disadvantaged and likely to benefit from of a Sistema-inspired socio-artistic intervention.

However, two recent reports—The Resilience of Students with an Immigration Background:

Factors that Shape Well-being (OECD, 2018), and Australia’s NAPLAN Achievement in
Reading, Writing, Language Conventions and Numeracy: National Report for 2017
(Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2017)—challenge the
assumption that equates a parent born overseas with educational disadvantage. These two
reports reveal that, within Australia, having a parent born overseas of non-English speaking
background does not necessarily equate to lower achievements in education. Both reports find
that children with parents born overseas of non-English speaking backgrounds who speak a
language other than English, in particular India, the Philippines and China, are outperforming
their Australian-born peers. While this information should not be used to construct a new set
of flawed assumptions, it does invite us to drill more deeply into the complex nature of socio-
artistic interventions. It also highlights the need for a set of tools more nuanced than blunt
presumptions of disadvantage and risk.

A more honest approach to the social justice endeavour demands an engagement with the
complex sociocultural realities existing within music and social change work. In this next
section, I do this with the help of illustrative personal stories gathered through practice, where
complex interactions of values, beliefs, histories, desires, hopes, and unspoken agendas
produce far more questions than conclusions. The stories can be read multiple ways, eliciting

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thoughts: positive, negative, ambiguous. Depending on the reader’s standpoint, conclusions
might be invited, even demanded, although this is not my purpose. These are personal
recollections shared in the interests of inviting others to join me and search more deeply into
the attitudes, beliefs and assumptions that we bring to our work, particularly when we aspire
to achieve social justice and change through interventions aimed at children.

INTERROGATING COMPLEXITY

Complexity: CALD children and assumed future risk

Drawing on my experience within an opt-in Sistema-inspired program, the parents

representing the dominant CALD populations are educated and have high educational
aspirations for their children. Parents appear to value classical music, both as part of their own
heritage and as the cultural capital necessary to establish themselves in their new country and,
perhaps, strive to reclaim their former social position (Trulsson, 2015). While there is no
doubt that their children benefit from learning a musical instrument, are they at-risk and in
need of an intervention through music or are we [re]framing them through a discourse of
deficiency?

For the parents I met, the program is a wonderful opportunity to provide their children with
access, at no financial cost, to high quality early instrumental music education. In this way,
the program addresses a real factor of disadvantage: lack of finances.

I momentarily pull on the small thread of a conversation with a parent who had volunteered as
a representative of one of the program’s dominant CALD populations to provide translation
and cultural advice. This mother met my own daughters in the early weeks of the program,
before their university semester started and when extra volunteer hands were required, and,
despite our differing heritages and stories, I felt a sense of connection and familiarity. Two of
her children attended the program along with their cousins. In my memory, this mother and I
have finished talking about a parent survey she was translating, and she tells me how much
the children are enjoying the program:

“The children have found violin lessons on YouTube”, she tells me. “They have started
teaching themselves a tune. The older cousins are helping the younger. We are so lucky to be

9
part of this program.” And I think to myself, “You are doing exactly what my parents did for
me, and what I have done for my children. My gut instinct tells me you will find a way to
support your children’s interests in music, education and life. Your children are benefiting
from this program and are, undoubtedly, deserving of free instrumental music education, but
are they really the target beneficiaries of a socio-artistic intervention modelled on the El
Sistema deficit narrative? Do I really believe they are at-risk?”

In even telling the story of my assumed attribution of a middle-class disposition to this

family, I am highlighting one of the complex tensions associated with Sistema-inspired
programs. Who are the children who gain access to the benefits of these programs? Are they
children with parents who hold or mimic the middle-class disposition and, if so, what is the
socio-artistic intervention taking place? Is the motivation social justice or one of shoring up
the institution of classical music and, if the latter, is it simply reinforcing inequalities and
socio-cultural structures of power?

Complexity: Aspirations and promises

This next narrative echoes concerns and critical debates within Sistema-inspired literature
around the role of one-to-one tuition on social and musical outcomes (Creech et al., 2014),
and the need for more research in this area. My recollection involves a conversation with a
parent whose daughter was in her first year of High School (Year 7). This girl had been
participating in the program for a number of years and expressed a desire to include cello as
subject in her final year at school (Year 12). To reach the required standard for Year 12
instrumental music, individual lessons would be necessary, so the parent had requested a
meeting to discuss how her daughter might be supported to achieve this objective:

“Can you afford lessons?”, I ask. “No”, her mother replies. “Does your school offer a string
program?”. “No,” she replies. Knowing that there are secondary schools in the wider area
with instrumental programs, I enquire “Would she consider changing schools?” “No. This is
not possible”, her mother tells me. “She has friends and is happy at the school.” Pushing a
little, the mother adds “But my daughter loves playing her instrument and has been playing it
for a long time. She really wants to do it as a final year subject.” But in reply, we have
nothing to offer as a solution. Instead, she is encouraged to join an afterschool community

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youth orchestra in a neighboring area, which she does for a period of time. Until her parents
can no longer manage the hour and a half drive at dinner time.

It is possible to read this girl's situation in two ways. Through one lens, the program has given
her the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, an opportunity not otherwise available to
her. This learning has been continuous for more than three years which suggests that, even if
she were to cease playing the violin today, she will have gained educational and psycho-social
benefits (Osborne et al., 2015).

Through another lens, the program inspired an aspiration in this girl. She has spent five years
learning from teaching artists, all professional classical musicians employed by one of the
state’s peak classical music organisation. She has been encouraged to feel a connection, an
identification, with these musicians. She has worn special T-shirts, performed in annual
concerts alongside these musicians, and her face (or that of one of her friends) has appeared
on banners and other promotional material. I find myself thinking “She has been told that she
can be one of us.” Yet, now, in this disquieting moment, both she and her mother are
confronting the flaw: she can’t be like one of us. The fact that the promise was never made
concrete (only ever implied) is damaging, and I often wonder how her mother felt. Did she
feel deceived by us? Did she feel naïve? Did she feel she had failed her daughter in some
way? Did she feel angry? Did she feel sad? And, how did her daughter feel? None of these
questions have answers, as they were never posed because there was nothing we could do.

What are the promises we make when we invite children into the space of a Sistema-inspired
program, particularly those run by prestigious professional symphony orchestras? What are
our obligations (moral and ethical) when we inspire aspirations, fostering dreams and desires?
What are we doing when our work “relies on the production of desires, which it cannot fulfil”
(De Vries, 2007, p. 30)?

Complexity: Children at current risk

My recollections next turn to the cohort of children of traditional disadvantage, characterised

by generational poverty and lack of parental education, absence of educational aspiration, or
some form of learning disability. In my experience with an opt-in program, these children
represent around 15% of the full participant cohort, with half leaving the program within

11
twelve months. While this evidence is anecdotal, it is replicated in the findings of Alemán et
al. (2017) relating to socio-economic demographics and attrition.

Questions of access, integration and participation are muddy ones. If a child needs a parent to
drive them to and/or from a program, is this equitable access? If a child’s learning or behavior
needs are incompatible with the participation model (e.g., ensemble learning), is this inclusive
participation? While noting that work needs to be done in the Sistema-inspired sphere on
inclusive learning and teaching practices, Creech et al.’s (2013) claim that visible barriers are
addressed warrants further scrutiny in the light of questions about the veracity of the social
inclusion claims of the parent El Sistema model (Mota et al., 2016, Alemán et al., 2017,
Baker, 2014).

I am reminded, first, of two siblings with behaviours that challenged members of the program
team. “A dysfunctional, troubled family”, a school representative discloses when advice is
sought about how to manage the children’s disruptive physical and verbal interactions with
their peers and teaching artists. I am next reminded of a boy with an Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder diagnosis, his single parent father struggling to manage his son’s
diagnosis, medication and behaviour. The participation of these children made heavy
demands on the program, demands that the model was neither equipped nor resourced to
meet. These children eventually left the program, and we were wrong to imagine that we had
the experience and knowledge to support them. More concerningly, we were wrong to
imagine that this music program was the intervention these children needed.

I recall another conversation with a mother whose son has a mild autism spectrum disorder.
Drawing on my past experience supporting people with intellectual disabilities and their
families and advocating for their individual rights and entitlements, I find myself chatting
with this mother about the challenges her son is experiencing being part of a large ensemble-
based program—the noise, chaos, rules—and his compensatory behaviours (such as repetitive
noises or vocalisations). She tells me that her son has been learning guitar at home with his
father, and pulling on my community and folk musician hat, I express how wonderful this is!
I then tell her about my daughter who, after giving up formal violin lessons, took up the banjo
and taught herself to play. I describe how we play together at home, how much enjoyment
playing the banjo gives her, and how she is studying to be an animator. I try to communicate
my belief that playing a musical instrument is an experience available to all of us, whether

12
through formal education or informal activities, and that individual learning needs or
preferences are not barriers. What matters is the support and encouragement we receive that
enables us to find our preferred pathway.

We imagine that the experience of ensemble-based music learning is the intervention these
children need, however it is an imagined belief rather than an evidence-based fact. We call
upon our own memories of learning music, and the words of those children who do progress
and succeed within the program, imagining that the program will benefit all children. When
those children, the children who may well be at current risk, do not align with our imagined
belief, we use behavioural rules, attendance registers, or, most shamefully, the child’s own
learning disability, to negotiate their exclusion from the program using words couched in the
nicest possible way and delivered by caring and supportive staff. Instead of acknowledging
the limitations of these programs and sharing our financial resources with specialist agencies
or experts in this complex area of risk and disadvantage, we deceive ourselves into believing
that our inability to provide the positive intervention to which these children are entitled is
due, not to our own failings, but those of the children. And, we ignore or disregard any hint of
a suggestion that the precious dollars funding our activities might be better redistributed
elsewhere.

Teaching artists associated with Sistema-inspired programs in Australia are predominantly

conservatoire-trained professional classical musicians. Some may have an interest in more
diverse musical practices and genres, however very few have any form of formal teacher
training. Thus, their teaching practice is principally based on their own experience of one to
one learning focused on musical development aims rather than social development aims. It
would seem that Australia shares the problems identified internationally (Hallam & Burns,
2017, Creech et al., 2013) of insufficient numbers of teaching artists with both musical
expertise and skills in teaching large groups of children with diverse learning or behavioural
needs, and an absence of the necessary materials and pedagogy.

My narratives of these moments of disquiet suggest that Sistema-inspired programs in

Australia have the potential to deliver benefits when conceived as transitional, short-term
interventions aimed at supporting the settlement of recently arrived communities who
subscribe to the same, or similar, cultural values. When conceived as long-term interventions
for children, the inability of the programs to deliver the one to one instrumental education

13
required to support participants wishing to progress along future pathways in music needs to
be recognised. In such instances, efforts must be made from the outset to ensure that program
limitations are transparent and align with participant expectations. Beyond this, however, as
long-term interventions aimed at addressing significant disadvantage and supporting children
at-risk, there is pressing need for deeper investigation, particularly when funding (private,
philanthropic and government) might be better directed to organisations with core missions
and expertise aligned to this objective.

DISCUSSION: INSTABILITY AT THE FAULT LINE

The following discussion points to some of the assumptions, tensions and ambiguities that
create instability at the “fault line” (Baker, 2016, p. 9) in the international Sistema-inspired
sphere. There are few researchers and practitioners willing to acknowledge these points of
vulnerability in Australia. Solidarity of voices is essential in the face of the continual erosion
of educational funding and the steep decline in equitable opportunity of access to music
education for primary school aged children, particularly those from lower socio-economic
backgrounds. And so, despite the growing body of literature focusing on the complexities
associated with Sistema-inspired programs internationally, voices in Australia remain silent.
My decision to speak of my experience within the Sistema-inspired sphere has been difficult,
however in the absence of evidence-based data to inform the case for adjustments and
improvements to programs, I believe self-reflection and self-evaluation—together with the
associated risk of emic duplicity—is both an essential tool and an ethical responsibility.

Assumption: The power of music to transform

El Sistema’s aspirational message has seductive power for middle-class educated classical
musicians. Stories from Venezuela of the successful transformation of young lives offers us a
mirror through which we can view a more flattering reflection of ourselves. Rather than
representatives of an elite and exclusionary cultural minority, we become empowered agents
of change and social justice. Driven by a form of missionary zeal, we gather others into our
“highly functional community” (Booth, 2011, p. 23) using music for “social transformation”
(Nemoy, 2015, p. 8). Meanwhile, with the territory of middle-class educated classical
musicians increasingly destabilised in the postmodern world, any questioning of the veracity
of this reflection acts like a loose thread in a knitted fabric, slowly unravelling when subjected

14
to even the lightest pressure. How can we hope to reconcile our privilege with the
incontestable knowledge of the struggles of others? It is no wonder I have found these
personal stories so hard to tell.

However, narrating my own experience has allowed me to inspect the filter I have been using
to frame, retrospectively, my participation in a Sistema-inspired program in Australia. This
process reveals truth in Baker’s observation (2016) that “[e]ven something as simple as
providing poor children with music lessons may be an act of social justice from one
perspective but an act of social injustice from another” (p. 11). Without program data and
hard evidence, we find ourselves instead relying on assumptions and imported rhetoric.

Tension: Partnerships with orchestras

The symphony orchestra’s principal goal today (stated or not) is survival, with this objective
requiring a carefully conceived strategy designed to argue the relevance of the artform. In
Australia, state-based orchestras have transitioned over the last two decades from being
government-funded bodies under the auspices of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, to
independent entities that must survive through a complex matrix of funding sources.
Education has become a critical component for its capacity to attract additional philanthropic,
government, corporate and private funding, while simultaneously providing a clear means of
publicly demonstrating the relevance of the orchestra and shoring up the next generations of
supporters and subscribers. Thus, while education is not an orchestra’s core business, it is an
activity which serves a multitude of purposes in the challenge of survival.

Attention is slowly being directed toward the resultant complexities associated with Sistema-
inspired programs delivered by symphony orchestras, in particular the need for transparency
about the benefits they receive and their obligation to adjust their interests and motivations to
align with those of the populations with whom they work:

Symphony orchestras have much to gain from forging strong partnerships with Sistema
programmes, in terms of revitalising their own support base and making themselves
relevant within a changing economic and social context. However, such partnerships
require orchestras to refocus their missions around community needs and social goals,

15
 addressing fundamental questions relating to their raison d’être. (Creech et al., 2013, p.
101)

A brief journey into the mission statements and education aims of the orchestras running
Sistema-inspired programs in Australia evidences the uncomfortable relationship between
education practices and overall missions. Mission statements include such objectives as to
“inspire and engage audiences” (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, 2018) and “touch souls and
enrich lives through music” (West Australian Symphony Orchestra, 2018a), with education
aims including to “offer individuals of all backgrounds an opportunity to develop their
relationship with our Orchestra, and build their ownership of and engagement with orchestral
music through high quality, relevant and interactive experiences” (West Australian Symphony
Orchestra, 2018b). These statements affirm that the primary interest of the symphony
orchestras running Sistema-inspired programs is to support the continuance of the institution
of classical music and the orchestra through delivering music education programs to
communities experiencing barriers to accessing the art form. They also reveal the distance
that exists between these mission statements and the ‘social justice’ claims attached to El
Sistema and Sistema-inspired programs. As Fink (2016) reveals, motivations and actions are
complex.

The dominant El Sistema-discourse around social change, empowerment and transformation

through classical music and the youth orchestra project presents the professional symphony
orchestra with an opportunity to “rebrand itself as a “forward-looking” agent of social
change” and then, in turn, transform this activity into “social justice as marketing” (Fink,
2016, p. 46-47):

[A] fantasy of music appreciation as social justice functions as a powerful marketing

tool for an institution whose audience is socially and politically liberal, but whose own
organisational and business practices are those of the neoliberal elite. (Fink, 2016, p.
37)

Somewhere deep within the fault line rests a contradiction which Baker (2016) identifies in
his description of the Sistema-inspired sphere having “happily taken the Sistema name and
philosophy and the publicity and funding that go with them”, while “turning a blind eye to
problems within the parent program” (p. 7). Ignorance of the growing uncertainties associated

16
with El Sistema might have been a fair excuse in the past, particularly in the face of the
wealth of literature reporting the incontestable and remarkable achievements of El Sistema. In
2018, however, the Sistema-inspired sphere risks being exposed as ignorant by intention,
rather than ignorant by being uninformed.

Ambiguity: Socio-artistic intervention or middle-class boundary drawing?

And so, why youth orchestral projects? There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the youth
orchestra as a cultural choice for those with interest and opportunity, but is it an appropriate
intervention when aimed at addressing social and educational disadvantage for children from
lower socio-economic and culturally and linguistically diverse communities? What are the
particular ethical complexities that arise when programs are run by prestigious professional
symphony orchestras and funded through the philanthropic donations by privileged supporters
of the institution of classical music? The rhetoric of the social benefits of classical music and
the orchestra as a model for ideal cooperation and citizenship appears motivated by interests
identified by Bull (2015) as aimed at safeguarding privilege through “intentionally
exclusionary” actions that build and maintain cultural and social hierarchies and power
structures (pp. 25-26). When attached to practices and institutions so easily read as
exclusionary—underpinned by a cultural deficit model that disempowers rather than
empowers those we seek to support—claims of social inclusion and social justice need to be
questioned.

From an Australian perspective, how does this discourse apply to us? Where in this helping
narrative is a strengths-based framework permitting the “interrogation of one’s complicity
and/or privilege” (Land, 2015, p. 161) that is necessary if we are to avoid reproducing past
injustices? Are we convinced that Sistema-inspired programs hold up to post-colonial
scrutiny, and are we convinced that our actions are those of people truly decolonised? What
are the ethical considerations at play when we privilege a culture, and cultural practice, as a
means of helping children from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds? What are
we ignoring, or suppressing ourselves, when we assume that the intervention that will change
the lives of these children is a model transparently inspired by the orchestra and classical
music? Are we truly comfortable aligning ourselves with the use of classical music as a
“civilizing mission” (Bull, 2015, p. 121)? And when answers to these questions contain so
much ambiguity, there is an even greater imperative to scrutinise claims of social justice.

17
Turning the critical lens on myself, am I using my own actions in music as a form of social
validation and affirmation to address my own social privilege and role in continuing
injustices? Am I looking through outdated lenses of race and socio-economic status to
construct a form of “distorted reality” (Black & Stone, 2005, p. 251)? In trying to be
accountable for my personal privilege through addressing structural injustices, am I instead
reinforcing these injustices by my very presence? These are impossible dilemmas and knotty
problems that, as yet, we do not have the framework to resolve.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

It is essential that we examine the assumptions and beliefs about ourselves and others that we
bring to our work as musicians and educators. Over the past decade in folk music, I have
found music on stages and in family homes, pubs, camp sites, church halls, and street corners.
I have intentionally retuned my ears, listening for the multifarious components that come
together in the act of music-making. I have resisted exclusionary judgements relating to skill
and expertise, focusing instead on the inclusionary features of the music-making occurring.
This is not always easy, as my assumptions, beliefs and value-systems are deeply embedded,
resulting in a continual push and pull between who I am and who I wish to be. And as I note
this ongoing struggle within myself, I call on Deborah Cheetham’s graceful response to a
music educator’s question about how to address the loss of music that occurs when non-
Indigenous music educators leave their work with Indigenous communities: “Never assume
that there is not music within community.”2

And so, what assumptions and beliefs do we impose on others? In a magazine

article commissioned by a Sistema-inspired programs during the Simón Bolívar String
Quartet’s Australian tour in 2017 (Hooper, 2017), the author describes the quartet’s visit to
the program. The article includes the following quote from one of the teaching team: “Last
year we’d see kids taking their cello cases and putting them over their heads, pretending to be
in a war and shooting…That’s just not happening anymore.”

2
ibid

18
As I recall this statement, the wave of emotion that overtook me the first time I read it returns.
These well-intended words reach to the heart of my struggle with El Sistema in Australia. I
listen to the voice of white, middle-class, privileged individuals—representatives of the
institution of classical music—imposing their assumptions and beliefs on another group of
people. The quote encapsulates the damage and, in the context of our colonial history,
violence (Freire, 1970) that continues to be done by those with privilege under the guise of
helping through the reframing and retelling of another person’s story in order to (re)align it
with one’s own interest or agenda. Even if any of these children, or their parents, had shared
first-hand experiences of guns or war, the retelling, presumably without consent, of another's
story for the purpose of program promotion is a betrayal of trust. The imposition of an
assumed story on the lives of these children is a betrayal of their individual rights and their
agency. Do we have the right to represent these particular children as victims—their actions
interpreted by powerful observers (indeed, self-authorised judges of appropriate childhood
play) through a lens of disadvantage or risk— while other children elsewhere are simply
allowed to draw on references from popular culture and pretend that their instrument cases
contain guns?

El Sistema, when appropriated by classical music organisations in Australia, is an effective

tool to harness the hearts and wallets of donors, media and supporters. This appropriation,
when done uncritically, enmeshes all involved in a deceit, unknowingly or knowingly,
consciously or unconsciously. Most damagingly, these programs champion the deficit model
which sees disadvantage rather than advantage, disability rather than ability. From our unique
perspective in Australia, the programs replicate the deficit discourse that continues to have a
negative impact on the lives of children defined as at-risk and Indigenous people in Australia,
acting to shore up institutions of power. In the same way that Aboriginal identity is framed by
narratives of deficiency “tied to philosophical underpinnings generated during the colonial
era” (Fforde et al., 2013, p. 169), the children and families involved in Sistema-inspired
programs risk having a damaging stereotype of deficit discourse applied to them through
association with the dominant El Sistema story. Meanwhile, the essential continuous
improvement and development of these programs is made difficult by the absence of
evidence-based data differentiating success factors and discriminatory features. Without this
knowledge, how can we be sure that socio-artistic interventions, such as those inspired by El
Sistema, improve the lives of those children and families who are in genuine need, both
currently and in the future. As we work towards the strengths-based framework that is so

19
desperately needed, perhaps we might begin by closely inspect our answers to two questions:
why are we delivering intervention programs to these communities, and are we the best
people do be doing so?

20
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