During the 2001-2002 school year, the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation (IYMF) developed a project entitled “Enfants d’ici, contes d’ailleurs” (Children from here, tales from afar) with its partners.

For this project, the IYMF has entered into partnership with the following entities:

Partners

  • The Melina Programme (Greece)
  • Publishers Editions de Vecchi (France, Spain and Italy)
  • The City of Altea (Spain)

Co-organisers

  • MUS-E Belgium
  • La Fundación Yehudi Menuhin España
  • MUS-E Hungary
  • MUS-E Italia
  • MUS-E Portugal

Associate Experts:

  • L’Institut Kurde (France)
  • L’Union Romani (Spain)
  • The Armenian Institute (London)
  • Volubilis c/o Le Centre pour l’égalité des chances et la lutte contre le racisme (Centre for equal opportunities and the fight against racism) (Belgium)
  • EDEN Academia (Spain)
  • SSM “Le Méridien” (Mential Health Centre) Belgium

Sponsors:

  • AOL-Time Warner (USA)
  • Merloni (Italy)

The project

“Enfants d’ici, contes d’ailleurs” was set within the framework of the EU’s “Culture 2000” Programme under the “Artistic and Literacy Creation” area for eligibility for projects aimed to link cultural transmission, artistic creation and social integration. The project’s objectives were the following:

  • launching a collection of tales for children submitted by authors from four minority cultures living in Europe: Armenians, Berbers, Gipsies, and Kurds;
  • helping primary school children discover the richness of these cultures and involving them in the project by asking them to create illustrations for the tales published;
  • showing that art helps overcome the obstacles caused by differences in languages and cultural backgrounds;
  • educating children in diversity issues and showing that men and women in different origins experience universal notions such as travel, love, birth, hatred, separation or death in both different and similar ways;
  • widely disseminating the good practices experienced in this project thanks to the development of written material and the presentation of videos on the Web

Why?

When Yehudi Menuhin created the Foundation in 1991, his purpose was to develop projects to “give a voice to the voiceless”. MUS-E was established to give a voice to children through introducing art at school, whereas the Assembly of Cultures of Europe (ACE) was meant to give a voice to unrepresented cultural groups so that they could express themselves at a European level. While MUS-E has steadily grown, the ACE has unfortunately gone to sleep over the years.

In order for Lord Menuhin’s wish to be given new life, Marianne Poncelet (IYMF Executive Vice President) has designed a project that integrates the goals of both MUS-E and ACE.