What is a núcleo? The Guárico State case.

Background. Early on in the Venezuelan orchestra movement, new centers all over the country started replicating the ideas and philosophy of José Antonio Abreu.  However, larger decisions and funding management still happened in Caracas.   In order to alleviate the amount of bureaucracy concentrated in Caracas, FESNOJIV encouraged the creation of State núcleos, each with their autonomous foundation. This facilitates many decisions to be taken locally and, most important, that each state núcleo can raise extra funds and grow faster without having to rely exclusively on Caracas (FESNOJIV still secures payment for all human resources).

However, at the end there is also regional centralization when new programs in smaller towns need to rely on the decisions made in their state capital. Funding is still channeled through the state foundation. The state leadership also assigns human resources, so the few teachers available can only go visit the programs outside the capital every now and then. Under this organization, those new dependent centers were sometimes called módulos (modules).   So, for instance, the town of ABC’s program would have been called the ABC Módulo of the Núcleo Estado XYZ.

Guárico State’s Structure in a nutshell. In recent years, Guárico State has been experiencing positive changes in leadership which has allowed innovation.   The first thing to notice is that each town in Guárico has an autonomous núcleo (the town of Calabozo has two), which means that they have, or are moving towards having, its own foundation or other type of incorporation.  The Guárico State Children and Youth Symphony Orchestra Foundation (FOSIJEG), led by conductor Jesús Morín (who is in his late 20s), is now the main institution that coordinates all Guárico State núcleos’ activities and oversees the state-wide human resources distribution, coordinates state-wide professional development programs, state-wide seminarios (camps), etc. They also oversee the creation of new programs across the state.  Guárico also has one of the 3 extensions of the Caracas’ Simón Bolivar Conservatory that have been established so far.

Núcleos in Guárico.  Up to the spring of 2010, Guárico State has 10 núcleos (3 of them in the process of acquiring legal incorporation as foundations, so for the time being they depend solely on FOSIJEG).  Each núcleo’s human resources are paid by FESNOJIV, and some funds are raised for all núcleos by FOSIJEG, and some funds are raised locally by each núcleo. Therefore, the role of FOSIJEG in relation to the núcleos is reduced to making sure that each núcleos’ resources are used to their best by avoiding overlaps in programming and human resources.

During our visit to Guárico State, I had the chance to attend a meeting with all the state’s núcleo directors to decide on the instruments (types, brands, quantities, etc.) to buy on the next big purchase from a grant coordinated by Morín’s team.  His leadership style during that meeting is a reflection of the progressive organization that makes Guárico stand out as a model for other states to follow.

Módulos in Guárico.  In Guárico, the notion of the núcleo extension was not ruled out at all.   Núcleos can still create módulos in nearby (sometimes not so close) neighborhoods or villages.  They usually target communities in need, or simply communities that have expressed their interest and commitment in having a music program.  Núcleos go out of their ways to provide human resources and create ad hoc programs with any resources available to create this new módulos, as long as the community offers commitment and encourages their children to participate. 

There are 23 módulos in Guárico (1-6 módulos in the núcleos that have them). A teacher in the town of Calabozo told me that for them, the módulos are a way to be closer to the community.  She thinks that FESNOJIV sees this also as a way to recruit and engage more children into joining the orchestras and choirs.  Regularly, the idea was to make use of the schools buildings (or other venues) on after-school schedules.  However, in some cases, the schools were eager to incorporate the módulo music program into the school’s schedule.



More to come on the Guárico State módulos.

On planning, repertoire and curriculum in El Sistema

One more generalization that I had been a bit uncomfortable with is the idea of curriculum.  Before coming here, I felt that in applying the idea of an El Sistema curriculum and a pre-designed repertoire list in the US would be like admiring the beautiful freedom of a bird and then starting to look for a golden cage to capture that freedom at home.

In the past weeks in Venezuela, I found I was not that lost in my idealism.  The word for curriculum (pensum) has come up just a couple of times in conversations, but I have heard a lot of "academic planning".  It makes sense.  In planning, the focus is on the larger goal. A curriculum gets easily caught in the procedures and the rules.

Here in Venezuela, academic planning starts in the local núcleos, then at a regional level, and then at a national level (I'll write more about organizational structures later).  Each local núcleo can create their own strategies to reach the common goal.  And everyone can assess if any particular strategy is working or not, and if not, it can be easily fixed of substituted by a strategy that has proven successful elsewhere.

In the case of the repertoire that El Sistema has been famous for, it turns out that there is no manual, mandate or official list of repertoire.   It gets determined on a local level, and local núcleo directors choose by following trends and examples from other núcleos or from the national selection ensembles in Caracas, like the Simón Bolivar or the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestras.

My feeling is that the challenge is not creating a sound ideal curriculum, but creating a solid network based on human contact, gut feeling and support to others' efforts. With this, conversations about goals, strategies and respectful assessment will make this movement grow rapidly and strongly throughout the World.

On El Sistema generalizations

When asking the question "What is El Sistema?", or "What is its essence?" I noticed people usually have their mindsets framed in what they are familiar with, and that leads to certain generalizations. Preset ideas of methods, curriculum, schooling, arts policy, and many others come to mind.  I am uneasy with the idea of generalizations. Early on I noticed that detaching from the usual U.S. generalizing mindsets would be a big challenge.  I understand they are sometimes a strategy to give order to our thoughts, but I would think that in order to understand the essence of El Sistema the first step would be not to try to fit it into any of our regular generalizations.  Think out of the box.  Now, really, get out of the box.

A couple of weeks ago, José Antonio Abreu explained to us –the Abreu Fellows–  the origin of the "El Sistema" brand, which has to do more with Venezuelan government bureaucracy than its organizational structure. Furthermore, Abreu called it a permanent ser no-ser todavía –"not-yet-being being".  That idea alone may define the essence of El Sistema....but even then...one still has to think outside of that box.   As we have been getting deeper in exploring the Venezuelan Orchestra System, I realize that not even the ser no-ser-todavía statement cannot be taken as a generalization of how things work here.  


In my next blogs I will try describe with examples and try to explain our expericences.  This trip started on Febrary 18th with the 10 Fellows in Caracas, and now continued in the Guárico province, right in the center of Venezuela, where along with 3 more of the Fellows, we have visited multiple programs and met amazing people, young musicians and leaders.  (I hope I can blog more frequently, sometimes internet is spotty here, and most times, we are out and about.  No time to stop and turn on the computer!)

I don't think I will come up with the right words to give a definite answer to the question of what is the essence of El Sistema.  For one thing, because any example that I describe here will be soon outdated.  Things evolve freely and fast around here.  And then, as much as we are trying to catch as much of the essence of El Sistema in Guárico, any idea that I write here which may be seen as a generalization, will be challenged by what we find in the next province we visit.

Political Spectacle: El Sistema Seminarios, policy and decision-making.

On our first week in Venezuela, and among the excitement of finally being here as Abreu Fellows, I have also had time and inspiration to reflect on ideas I've had for a couple of weeks now. Political spectacle is a subject I have thought –and blogged– about before, in relation to El Sistema and arts policy in general.

Last week, our last in Boston, we had a lecture by Ricardo Hausmann, Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and former Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993). One of his anecdotes that day reminded me of the political spectacle phenomenon in relation to El Sistema: Dr. Hausmann had to deal with big budget cuts in the Venezuelan government, after the Gulf War set the prices of oil on a downward spiral. Part of his task was to meet with each of the high government officials to ask for recommendations on where to make cuts in their ministries' budgets. When it was the time to speak with Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu, he called Hausmann at the last minute to cancel the budget-cut meeting due to an emergency at his office, but he sent him tickets to a concert that evening. In Dr. Hausmann's own words to us, after the concert he just didn't have the heart to make any cuts in Abreu's budget.

This story sounded familiar to me.  For instance, I had been always curious on the purposes and effects of the El Sistema "seminarios" (intensive camps), specifically the ones I helped organize as a host in Guatemala, in the late 1990s. Besides from empowering young musicians and raising the bar of an otherwise stale ensemble, these seminarios also had a huge impact on some of our policy makers and powerbrokers in the audience. Government officials, sponsors, and even parents immediately realized that their commitment to this cause was essential to the cause, and potentially favorable to their own interests.

People usually argue that playing that card –the political spectacle card– leads to compromising the educational and social benefits of a program.  If you present the final product of an intensive seminar it looks and sounds impressive, but skeptics say that this is an incomplete educational process that disfigures traditional music pedagogy.  Moreover, they argue, there is no immediate way to prove that the seminario will lead to the promised social/human development outcomes.

On the other hand, Murray J. Edelman (Symbolic Uses of Politics) argues that in creating policy, instrumental evidence (assessments, surveys, scholarly research) don't matter much.  Rather, what's important to policy makers is to give the appearance that they have done something.  Edelman calls this symbolic policy.  He argues that the people, the spectators, consume symbols that have an emotional value (anxiety over problems, reassurance, patriotism or even revange).  In his 1988 book Constructing the Political Spectacle, Edelman argues that the constant use of symbolic policy is the main reason why it is impossible to trace the the outcomes and consequences of political decisions and policy-making.  Come think about it, most policy, as Edelman argues, comes as a result of power brokering and negotiation.

In other words, it seems like decision-making could depend more on touching someone's heart (the policy makers themselves, or the spectators they serve) than in presenting hard evidence of beneficial outcomes.  As El Sistema has demonstrated here in Venezuela and in other countries, support ultimately comes from institutions ran by human beings.  Political spectacle is a powerful tool of El Sistema, one that has to be carefully designed.  A balance has to be kept not to fall into good 'ol cheap political circus (as many have had), nor to turn it into the usual un-accessible (elitist) classical music program.

"Austria came to learn closely about the national orchestra system"

Published by the Bolivarian News Agency (ABN)

Caracas, Feb 12th. ABN.- In order to strenghten the existing cultural links between Austria and Venezuela, and to get to learn in detail the teaching methods of the Venezuelan National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras and Choirs, and group of Vienese personalities headed by Austria's Minister of Education, Arts and Culture, professor Claudia Schmied.

(read the whole article, in Spanish)

Austria vino a conocer de cerca al Sistema Nacional de Orquesta

Caracas, 12 Feb. ABN.- Para estrechar los vínculos culturales ya existentes entre Austria y Venezuela y conocer de cerca los métodos de enseñanza musicales del Sistema Nacional de Orquestas y Coros Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, llegaron a Caracas varias personalidades vienesas, encabezadas por la ministra de Educación, Arte y Cultura de Austria, profesora Claudia Schmied.

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