OUTREACH SKILLS SESSIONS

Every year, the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra offers talented young musicians from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin training sessions in outreach skills and in raising artistic awareness within the Festival d’Aix, organized by Passerelles, the Festival’s department for cultural initiatives.

The programme has become a veritable mechanism for professional integration, allowing artists to continue honing their talents in the field of education and artistic outreach thanks to the mentorship of Mark Withers, while still allowing them to acquire their first professional experiences through their access to the Festival d’Aix.

These sessions aim to develop artists’ skills and enrich their professional experience, and to enable them to reach extremely diverse audiences who may live far from any performance venues. The goal of the sessions is to support artists as they learn new outreach and awareness-raising skills, and offer them true work experience, under a work contract with the Festival following their training period, and with ongoing support through their mentorship with Mark Withers.

Mark Withers, a trained clarinettist, has many years’ experience as an outreach educator and coordinator, in particular alongside the London Symphony Orchestra as well as with numerous organisations that promote access to music for all. Over the past decade, he has trained many young artists from the Académie du Festival d’Aix and the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra in outreach skills, and collaborated on several participatory projects with the Passerelles department.

SESSIONS

DECEMBER 5 — 9, 2022 IN AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE

For the annual Passerelles Training Days, the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra is offering a group of five young artists the opportunity to become real actors in the events and to lead some of the awareness-raising workshops and presentations of the 2023 opera programme, for professionals from the social, medico-social, health and education sectors. Two days of training, with mentoring and coaching by Mark Withers, will take place in advance of these ‘Passerelles Days' in order to design and prepare the workshops.

JUNE 2023 (dates and venue to come)

PEDAGOGICAL COACHING

Mark Withers, clarinetist and coordinator of participatory educational projects