The B-ME, Blending Melodies: Bridging Cultural Identities project is implemented by Sistema Cyprus (project coordinators), El Sistema Greece and the Associação das Orquestras Sinfónicas Juvenis Sistema Portugal and is co-funded by the European Union.

The project is pairing local composers with musicians from a refugee or migrant background to co-create original musical compositions that bridge the different cultural identities. These compositions will be performed by the partners’ youth orchestras and will be available for any other orchestras in the world. Through awareness raising concerts in the partners’ countries and beyond, B-ME is intended to highlight the value of cultural diversity.

Through this project we seek to offer the opportunity to musicians who have a refugee or migratory background to work with composers from their current community and co-create music compositions that bilaterally blend the sounds of their origins. Each pair will have the freedom in the creative process that will allow the composing partners to fully express their intimate music identity.

The students of the partner organizations, who belong to these vulnerable groups will have the opportunities to learn through music workshops and later prepare to perform these compositions in concerts. By opening these concerts to the general public we give people the opportunity to see these children and these composer musicians from a different perspective and enable their understanding of other cultures through music.

Finally, other composers and university students studying music and composition will have the opportunity to attend seminars focusing on the objective of promoting social equity through music. The results will be widely and orchestras in Europe and anywhere else in the world will be invited to perform these compositions in their own countries. The concerts of B-Me will be audio and visually recorded, and widely shared through the partner’s social media, inspiring audiences for many years to come.