aims

program

budget

overview

[i] the preservation, through recording, transcribing etc and live performance (in Australia, East Timor and elsewhere), of the traditional musical culture of East Timor; and

[ii] the establishment of a self-sustaining program that will provide educational and employment opportunities for East Timorese people

With the knowledge gained from her first tour in 2002, her personal experience of running children's musical classes in Australia, and the experience of working closely with the sisters of the Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies, in particular with the Timorese translator Luisa Cunha Marques, Ros has developed a collection of children's songs that have been translated into Tetum (East Timor's main indigenous language). They form the beginning of a much larger volume of songs to be used by local music educators. It is imperative to the project that indigenous songs form a large part of this material - hence the need to rediscover and collect these. This would require the knowledge and assistance particularly in language transcription and translation by Timorese, particularly in East Timor but also in Australia.

For the past three years Ros has conducted an on-going program in Sydney to collect musical instruments for East Timorese musicians to replace those destroyed in 1999. Through further acquisition of instruments, and contributing to and nurturing the re-establishment of traditional music and culture, our project seeks to give support to a profoundly traumatised and dispossessed group of people. Music and song are accepted methods of assisting in the problems associated with such trauma and in aiding the healing process.

This project would be the basis of an on-going self-sustaining program of musical training of Timorese educators. Initial workshops at Arte Moris, Catholic Education Centres, and the Centro Audio-Visual Max Stahl Timor Leste (CAMS Timor Leste) would lead to music workshops for pre-school, infant and early primary school children. CAMS Timor Leste's premises are ideal for these. It is envisaged that the already thriving theatre department of Arte Moris would utilise the music department for theatrical television, radio and live productions, with some of this carrying on from the children's television show we hope to produce (TVTL - Television Timor Leste - is keen to have a lot more local content in its programming).

[1] establish contacts and facilities to research, record, transcribe and translate, with the assistance and guidance of East Timorese communities in East Timor and Australia, traditional songs of East Timor; this would involve working in collaboration with the Centro Audio-Visual Max Stahl Timor Leste, Arte Moris/Bibi Bulak, and local educators in pre-schools and infant schools;

[2] research, record etc the material; work with local educators in infants, pre-school and primary schools; conduct music and instrument-making classes with teachers (many of these have been set up by Sister Aurora of Eskola Konassa and Sister Tess Ward of the Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies); a major spin-off would be the eventual establishment of a music centre for local youth, which would entail training local people in the method and delivery of music classes for young children, including instrument-making classes using recycled materials;

an instrument-building class in East Timor
[click photo for a larger version (416k) in colour]