Hollywood star Brian Cox and members of Snow Patrol, Deacon Blue and Danny Wilson are among a group of high-profile musicians and artists from Dundee who have joined the campaign to bring the El Sistema music project to the city.
More than two dozen artists and musicians are urging the city council to make the late Michael Marra’s dream a reality, saying Sistema has been proven to transform the lives of deprived children.
In a letter to The Courier, the 28-strong group states: “As artists and musicians who learned to play, act and create in Dundee, we would like to see the Sistema music project come to our city.
“Sistema transforms children’s lives. Started in the slums of Caracas, Venezuela, children were given violins, cellos, oboes and trumpets and taught to play together in an orchestra.
“It has transformed thousands of lives. Music gives children confidence, self-esteem, it improves their concentration, it gives them goals, it teaches them to work together, to create together, it gives them options for the future and to achieve and to travel.”
Sistema was brought to Scotland in 2008 in Stirling’s Raploch area.
The success of the scheme prompted the Scottish Government to invest £1.3 million to set it up in Govanhill in Glasgow.
In the months before his death last October, “Dundee’s Bard” Michael Marra was working towards his dream of bringing Sistema Scotland to Dundee.
When asked to back the campaign, Brian Cox agreed and said he thought the project should begin in Lochee.
He told The Courier: “Sistema knows no bounds. Why shouldn’t it embrace the children of Dundee? Lochee is just the beginning.”
Ged Grimes, formerly with Dundee band Danny Wilson and now bass player with Simple Minds, who also creates music for the computer games industry at his studio in Dundee, thinks it should be part of the curriculum for school children to learn to play a musical instrument.
“Given the resurgence of Dundee as a centre of research, arts and media, I think it’s just the right time for the project to come to the city.”
Among the others who have signed the letter are former Danny Wilson singer Gary Clark, who now lives and works in Los Angeles, Tom Simpson of Snow Patrol, Michael Marra’s two children Matthew and Alice and their band The Hazey Janes, as well as Michael’s brother Christopher, along with Alan Gorrie of the Average White Band.