VIOLINS
TO AFRICA

23rd May 2008

These children have only had three lessons (hence the ‘interesting’ bow holds...) but they're some of the beneficiaries of donations of instruments from Evans-Pughe Strings and the Benslow Music trust to a music school in Ghana called the Mansek Music Service.

Mansek has strong links with the UK through Milton Keynes Music Service (which Strings has been involved with for many years as an instrument supplier). And whenever possible, Strings donates violins, strings, rosin and pegs to them.

These latest pictures (courtesy of Milton Keynes Music Service) show some of the violins and violin students in action.

The Milton Keynes Music Service, which has supported Mansek almost from the beginning, regularly sends a team of teachers to train the music teachers at Mansek. These teachers pay their own costs, but feel that they gain as much as they give. MKMS also runs a biannual trip to Ghana for a few of the sixth form students at the Music Service.

Mansek in Takoradi was set up in 1999 to teach Ghanaians who wish to learn Western Classical Music. It has now extended its brief: it runs a High Life Band (Ghanaian popular music), and has recently started offering an instrumental teaching programme into schools.

Children can learn violin, clarinet, brass, keyboard and recorders, all on instruments donated from organisations in the UK, which as well as E-P Strings includes the Hitchin-based Benslow Music Trust.

Back