Back

Community Projects list

Community Projects

I – Community concert season in Belgium

As part of its Community Project, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel organises 45 concerts a year in nursing homes, prisons, hospitals, disadvantaged groups and refugee centres. It strengthens the possibilities of access to culture and more particularly to classical music.

Reduction of social inequalities

The Music Chapel fulfills its mission of transmission to new generations of musicians, contributes in its own way to the reduction of social inequalities and encourages the participation of children, young people and families, with particular attention to the most disadvantaged. Through its Community Project, the Music Chapel honours and promotes the diversity, the abundance, the mixture of languages and cultures that animate Belgium.

Sharing Christmas on Tour > Sharing Joy On Tour

In 2020, on the initiative of Her Majesty Queen Mathilde, to celebrate Christmas, despite the health and social crisis that is affecting us, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel has mobilised to bring music to as many people as possible, thanks to the network of Belgian social institutions that has been set up within its “Community” chair, supported by the Futur 21 Foundation.

Through the “Sharing Christmas on tour” project, the Chapel’s musicians offered Christmas concerts in the courtyards or gardens of each of these institutions, in strict compliance with sanitary conditions. Intended as “Christmas musical moments”, lasting 15 minutes each, these concerts were opportunities for sharing between the artists in residence at the Music Chapel and the public and nursing staff of establishments such as rest homes, hospitals, psychiatric centres, institutions caring for children in difficulty or with disabilities or day care institutions.

The different settings affected by the Community Project

Hospital environment 

Following the success of the concerts on the St Elisabeth site in previous years, we have set up a series of travelling concerts. The artists offer a programme that does not require piano accompaniment, thus making it possible to visit wards where patients are unable to move around, such as geriatric, dialysis and palliative care wards.

  • Cliniques Universitaires Saint Luc
  • Escale School Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc
  • Multiple Sclerosis League
  • Saint Michel Hospital
  • Saint-Elisabeth Hospital

Psychiatric environment

  • Area Centre – adolescents
  • Fond’Roy (Epsylon network)
  • La Ramée (Epsylon network)
  • Jean Titeca Hospital
  • Sans Souci Clinic.

Jail environment    

These concerts are given for about thirty prisoners. The audience is very receptive and participates afterwards in a short question and answer session.

  • Mons jail
  • Leuze-en-Hainaut jail
  • Ittre jail

Weakened and troubled environment  

  • Restaurant La Flûte – Nativitas – www.nativitas.be: The Community Project again this year responds to Nativitas’ desire to encourage cultural activities for the homeless and disadvantaged.
  • Maison d’Enfants Reine Marie-Henriette, nicknamed “La Flèche”, currently welcomes and accompanies more than 200 children aged 0 to 18. These children are mainly entrusted to her because their physical or psychological integrity is threatened by major parental, family, social or economic difficulties. Some children from La Flèche join the Equinox choir in Brussels every year.
  • Convivial: As part of the Convivial association’s cross-cultural meetings, the Music Chapel organises concerts that allow refugees and Belgians to share a moment around music and thus create links between them, allowing them to discover each other and share opinions in a convivial and multicultural setting. A piano is left permanently in the premises of Convivial.

Rest home   

  • Armonea@Le Vignoble, Braine l’Alleud
  • Le Gibloux is a residence for senior citizens connected to the OCMW Waterloo.
  • Vivalys de Woluwée Saint-Lambert is a residence for the elderly close to the Saint-Luc hospital. We were welcomed with great interest and enthusiasm by the residents and staff.
  • Les Ursulines – the CPAS home “Aux Ursulines” is located a few steps from the Place de la Chapelle in Brussels. In an establishment whose origins date back to the 17th century, 147 elderly people can be accommodated in a peaceful and family atmosphere. It is thanks to the “Sharing Christmas” that a link has been created with this home which has a magnificent and large chapel. The staff and management are very considerate and happy to host concerts by artists from the Music Chapel within their walls.

Disability

The Music Chapel reinforces the accessibility of its concerts and activities for people with sensory deficiencies by supporting and collaborating with other foundations & associations: Ligue Braille – Ligue Sclérose en plaque – Centre Comprendre & parler (deaf and hard of hearing) – IRSA (Institut Régional des Sourds et des Aveugles) – Asbl Horizons Neuf (disabled people)

II – The Equinox Choirs

Under the aegis of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and active in its Community Project, the non-profit organisation Chorales Equinox is dedicated to the creation and development of choirs for a vulnerable public (children from disadvantaged socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, young people with disabilities, inmates in prisons, etc.).

Created in 2012 under the impetus of the pianist Maria João Pires, “Equinox” is an in-depth work, destined to last, which tends to “root” the musical practice in an approach of cultural mediation and democratization.

The working method aims to strengthen the child’s abilities by encouraging artistic expression through music. It is of course a musical training aimed at the acquisition of specific skills, but also, more broadly, at stimulating artistic sensitivity. The participants, young and old, gradually become familiar with a repertoire that very quickly becomes their own, constituting a real cultural heritage. This is achieved through rhythm games, listening activities, physical and vocal exercises. The notion of listening is particularly important because it reveals both listening to oneself and listening to the other, it invites the subject to experience the in-between, this passage between the interiority of the intimate and the otherness. This learning of the other, in all its difference, thus favours solidarity and generates an emulation distinct from competition.

Weekly training and concerts

1/ The Equinox choir in Brussels, founded in 2012 for a disadvantaged audience, but which has opened up to a certain social mix in recent years and involves some thirty children aged 7 to 17.

2/ The Equinox choir at the SOS Children’s Village in Bujumbura, founded in 2013, reaches around 30 children and teenagers living in Burundi, a country shaken by political conflict.

3/ The Equinox choir of the SRJ “Les Tilleuls” (Residential Service for Young People) in Hévillers, founded in 2018, whose children, aged between 6 and 16, suffer from mild to severe mental deficiencies or character disorders.

4/ The Equinox choir of the SRJ “Clair Val” in Suarlée, founded in 2021, composed of young people aged 10 to 18 suffering from various disorders or developmental delays.

5/ The Equinox choir of the Ittre prison, founded in 2022, composed of prisoners.

6/ The Equinox choir of the SAJA “Les Acacias” (Day care service for adults) in Hévillers, founded in 2022 for a group of adults with disabilities.