Cerain Summer School for Roma Children
Cerain Summer Music School for Roma Children is a project developed and carried out by Terraforming in cooperation with the Serbian Youth Organization in Sweden, supported by the Swedish Institute program “Creative Force – Western Balkans”.
In a broad cooperation with the local Roma associations, local authorities (including the Ombudsman office, social workers and local police authorities), local culture institutions and universities in Novi Sad and Banja Luka, the summer school for Roma children was organized in Novi Sad and Banja Luka. 40 children from different local Roma communities in Serbia and Bosnia/Herzegovina participated in “Cerain Summer Music School for Roma Children” in Novi Sad and Banja Luka.
Through the language of music the basic concepts of human rights were presented to the children. They were inspired and encouraged to continue their school education by putting a special emphasis on building their self-confidence and making them aware of the fact that they are full rights citizens.
Cerain Summer Music School for Roma Children included more than 40 lectures and workshops, among others: “Musical English language”, “History of the blues music and the civil rights movement”, “Music styles and meeting between ethno-music and contemporary pop music”, “Basic Human Rights, tolerance and discrimination”, “Music and computers” etc.
International participants
Within the school program more than 20 lecturers were recruited locally (from Novi Sad and Banja Luka), from other cities in the region (from Belgrade and Sarajevo), and finally internationally (from Sweden, The Netherlands and Italy). Among lecturers we had pedagogies, human right experts, police officers, social workers, famous pop-rock musicians and producers, students of the music academies, classical music conductors, blues musicians, museum curators and Roma activists. Read more about our lecturers on the Cerain website.
In cooperation with the University of Novi Sad and the University of Banja Luka, 20 university students from the departments of Pedagogy, Social Work, Sociology and Music were engaged in “Cerain Summer Music School for Roma Children” as project-trainees.
Summer school “Cerain” had a truly multi-ethnic character. Among our Roma students there were both Orthodox Christian and Muslim children. Our teachers and student trainees were also from various ethnic backgrounds: there were Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Roma, Jews, Macedonians and Hungarians. Given ethnic tensions in the region, multi-ethnic character of the project was of extreme importance to make all participants of the project feel comfortable, accepted and free.
Read more about “Cerain Summer Music School for Roma Children” on the Cerain project website. Or download the PDF publications about the project (you can find it on the right side of this page).
Also, read about how our students are doing a couple of years later…
Some of the activities in Banja Luka:
Some of the activities in Novi Sad:
Interview with the students in Novi Sad:
Last day – farewell with the children in Banja Luka:
TV appearance on national TV channel RTV2 in Novi Sad about the Cerain Summer School:
