WHAT IS GET CLOSE TO OPERA ABOUT?
The GET CLOSE TO OPERA project will develop and promote inclusive and multicultural arts education and training programmes seeking to support best practice in migrant and refugee contexts. The training methodology will use Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory and focus on Opera as the delivery artform.

GET CLOSE TO OPERA brings together a partnership of organisations from across Europe - Materahub (Italy), Teatro L’Albero (Italy), Opera Circus (UK), Fundacio Privada Promocio d’Escoles (Spain), University of Patras (Greece), European Network of Migrant Women (Belgium) and RESEO (Belgium) and RESEO, the International Association for Higher Education in Opera and Dance.

GET CLOSE TO OPERA is inspired by opera as an artform that embraces multiple languages and engages its audiences emotionally through music. We believe that through opera we can unleash the potential to reach across barriers, creatively communicate, and explore what we have in common.

GET CLOSE TO OPERA recognises the wide range of activity that has already been created in this context, and seeks to engage with opera houses, opera companies, singers, musicians, dancers, actors, cultural mediators, facilitators and cultural practitioners working through the arts in migrant and refugee contexts, and educators interested in non-formal arts education. 

Over the next two years until 2019, we will develop and test with them a new methodology, exploring the opportunities that the Theory of Multiple Intelligence could contribute to informal education training and skills in Opera. After a preparatory research phase, we will design an innovative training programme for educators and trainers, which will take place in Matera (Italy) in 2019. We will then apply the methodology developed through a series of pilot actions involving migrants and refugees that will be carried out in Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium and United Kingdom. MIT was named by Howard Gardner, more information here. multipleintelligencesoasis.org

We understand that the level of informal education in the arts is at a different stage of progress in different countries. Working with our partners across Europe we will bring together our learning and the opportunities for the advancement of formal education in the arts in each country.

We will share our experience and our tools on an online platform open with all those who wish to experiment and share the GET CLOSE TO OPERA research and resulting methodology throughout Europe.

Opera Circus will be approaching facilitators and cultural practitioners from their wide network to assist with the research and with our partners and organisations in this field, explore what is available to learn from, and share within, this sector.

Further information from the Get Close to Opera web site.  Please get in touch with Opera Circus on admin@operacircus.co.uk if you would like to participate in the general survey. The survey link will be sent out on the morning of the 8th January 2018.

https://www.getclosetoopera.eu
 

We are waiting on the results of a series of funding applications to transform the way Opera Circus works, new directions, new visions and new work. The web site will be redesigned and much of the content rewritten. Please bear with us.
We have little capacity to do this at present and are working towards building a virtual arts company that works with a larger ensemble of creative freelance people who will help to develop all the opportunities that we are being offered with sustainable and long term goals.
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​The Complete Freedom of Truth, our long term international youth arts programme, has proven to be one of the most successful artistic processes we have created since we began in 1991, but has been a drain on our resources, human and financial. We need to re-imagine who we are and what we do and how we do it. .  

TCFT has opened up so many new areas of creative work and given new life to the artistic heart of the company.  

At present we have a campaign to raise £200,000 to help transform the company and to take on our new programme of work in 2018, 2019 and 2020.  If you have any ideas or connections do get in touch.  

We will be sending out a Crowdfunding campaign shortly to help raise £20,000 to support 20 young people from Dorset to participate in the TCFT youth programmes in 2018.  This includes exchanges with young people in Portugal, Serbia, Romania and/or Italy. They will have the opportunity to take part in the 10 day TCFT UK residency in August 2018, working with Glyndebourne and international partners from Sarteano and Setubal. We will be asking all of our networks to please help us circulate this at the right moment.  With thanks.

We have a new advisory group of people to support our Board of Trustees, bringing new skills and intellect to our future work. Alister O'Loughlin and Miranda Henderson of Urban Playground Team, Anna Ledgard, Philiy Page, Shaniqua Benjamin, Rory Newbery, Rachael Veazey, Darren Abrahams, Robert Golden, Alain Ruche (Brussels), Geraldine Sharpe Newton and with guidance from Matt Little of Rio in Bristol.

This has been an exceedingly tough but incredibly productive year.  Our thanks go to all those who have supported, helped, advised and been so patient to help us survive. We are on the cusp of change and look forward to the next five years of art, creativity, struggle and positive change.

• Nigel Osborne, MBE, Emeritus Professor of Music at Edinburgh University has been a mentor for Tina Ellen Lee, the Artistic Director of Opera Circus and for many thousands of other people around the World.  Nigel has been awarded the Inspiration Award by the British Composers Association and the Music Publisher's Association, not only for his beautiful music, he is primarily a composer of the highest distinction, but also for his human rights work in particular working with children with trauma in conflict and post conflict countries. We would all like to congratulate Nigel along with the many thousands of people who have been touched by his teaching, care, brilliance and music.  
• Opera Circus is working with Nigel on his next chamber opera, Naciketa, some years in development, but now working with the Southbank Centre, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth University and the Lighthouse, Poole, Dorset and looking to premier this beautiful new work in 2020.

Opera Circus is partnering with Bournemouth University on this 4 year Arts and Humanities Research Council Project called Changing the Story.  Please see the web site for this fascinating research project.  Our work will be part of the Kosovo process because of our history of engagement in the Balkan region in particular with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.  This is an exceptional opportunity to further the use of arts and cultural activities with young people in areas of post conflict. Thanks to Professor Stephanie Schwanders-Sievers for this opportunity. ​https://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125052/centre_for_world_cinemas_and_digital_cultures/3107/changing_the_story
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