Culture

Gibraltar Music Trust Launched - Aims To Remove Financial Barriers to Musical Instruments

By YGTV Newsroom

The Gibraltar Music Trust, Registered Charity No. 379, has officially launched with a clear mission: to provide free access to musical instruments across Gibraltar’s mainstream educational facilities, ensuring that children and young people have the opportunity to discover and experience music regardless of financial circumstances.

The charity has been founded by experienced music educator Lili Olivero, who is joined by Trustees Fiona Young, James Lasry and Shaun Baglietto. All four Trustees share a strong belief in the value of music education and the importance of giving young people meaningful access to real musical instruments.

A statement continued: “The Gibraltar Music Trust has already held a positive meeting with the Minister for Education and the Director of Education, who welcomed and expressed their support for the charity’s aims and its work within Gibraltar’s schools.

“Working alongside the Department of Education, 20 music classrooms have been identified across Gibraltar’s mainstream educational facilities.

“The Trust’s ambition is to kit out each of these 20 classrooms with a meaningful selection of orchestral instruments, with particular emphasis on the four principal orchestral families: Strings • Woodwind • Brass • Percussion

“Importantly, the initiative will begin from nursery and early-years education upwards. Once equipped, these classrooms will give students free access to a variety of instruments, allowing them to see, touch, hear and experiment with instruments that they might otherwise never have the opportunity to encounter.”

Founder Lili Olivero said:

“Touching and experimenting with different musical instruments is crucial at an early stage in inspiring a person’s potential.

“You simply don’t know whether you are a violin person, a clarinet person, a trumpet person or perhaps a percussion person unless you are given the opportunity to try these instruments during your early education years.

“That first moment when a child holds a violin, tries to produce a sound from a clarinet or discovers the excitement of percussion can ignite something that stays with them for life. We want every child in Gibraltar to have the opportunity for that moment.”

A statement continued: “The Trust would also like to encourage participating educational facilities to develop a simple instrument loan system, similar in principle to borrowing a book from a library. Where appropriate, students who develop an interest in a particular instrument could be given the opportunity to borrow it for a weekend or for a longer agreed period, allowing them to practise and explore the instrument at home before families need to consider the expense of purchasing one themselves.

“The instruments will remain the property of the Gibraltar Music Trust and will form part of a centrally managed community collection.

“The Trust will catalogue and log its instruments and coordinate their distribution to participating educational facilities. This will allow the charity to keep an accurate record of its collection, where instruments are located and how they are being used, while helping to ensure they can be maintained, repaired, recycled and redistributed as needs change.The aim is to create a responsible, sustainable instrument library for Gibraltar — one that can continue serving new generations of students for many years.”

The Trust’s first major community campaign will be “Donate an Instrument” .— a Gibraltar-wide appeal to find musical instruments that are currently sitting unused in homes, cupboards and storage. The message is simple: If you have an instrument, you no longer use, give it a new life. Violins, violas, cellos and other string instruments, together with woodwind, brass and percussion instruments, will be particularly welcomed as the Trust begins its work towards equipping the 20 identified music classrooms.

Instruments do not necessarily need to be in perfect condition. Where appropriate, donated instruments can be assessed to determine whether they can be repaired, restored or recycled for educational use.

Individuals, families and organisations can donate instruments, while local businesses and members of the community will also have the opportunity to sponsor the purchase of new instruments specifically for Gibraltar’s educational facilities.

The Gibraltar Music Trust will also be collaborating with the Royal Gibraltar Regiment Band and Corps of Drums Bandmaster Andee Birkett, who has kindly offered the use of the Regiment’s band room to assist with the storage of donated instruments during the Trust’s initial stages.

The Regiment will also be able to offer valuable practical support in areas such as instrument assessment, recycling and repair where appropriate.

This collaboration will help ensure that donated instruments can be properly managed and prepared before finding their way into Gibraltar’s music classrooms.

A statement continued: “For the Trust, increasing access to instruments also has particular relevance in a world where parents and educators are increasingly looking for meaningful ways to encourage children to spend time away from phones and screens.”

Lili Olivero said:“Music education gives children so much more than learning how to play an instrument. It develops concentration, discipline, creativity, coordination, confidence, perseverance and a wonderful sense of achievement, often improving their academic abilities too!

“In a world where we are constantly talking about how to get children to put down their devices, what better way than putting a musical instrument into their hands? Get them practising an instrument and off their phones!

“And there is something wonderfully simple about it — it’s AI-proof. It’s back to analogue in a good way!

“A child, a real instrument, their hands, their ears, their imagination and their determination. Technology and AI have an important place in our future, but we should never lose the enormous value of learning a physical, creative skill and making something ourselves.”

The Gibraltar Music Trust also has a much bigger, long-term ambition. By introducing significantly more children to strings, woodwind, brass and percussion from their earliest educational years, the Trust hopes that greater access to instruments could eventually lead to thriving school orchestras and ensembles across Gibraltar. This, in turn, could begin to unlock areas of orchestral music-making that have not been widely accessible locally for many years.

Lili said: “There is a much bigger vision behind putting these instruments into our classrooms.

“Imagine children encountering a violin, cello, flute or clarinet in nursery or primary school, discovering that they love it, continuing to learn and eventually coming together with other young musicians to play.

“If we create that access now, we could see thriving school orchestras developing and begin unlocking a whole world of orchestral music that simply hasn’t been accessible to enough young people here for years.

“And who knows where that could lead? There is a real possibility that, in time, we could nurture a genuinely home-grown Gibraltar orchestra — musicians who first discovered their instrument in one of our own classrooms.

“That would be an extraordinary legacy for Gibraltar.”

At the heart of the Gibraltar Music Trust is the belief that the cost of an instrument should never be the reason a child does not get the opportunity to discover music. By retaining ownership of the instruments and managing them as a shared community resource, the Trust hopes that one donated instrument can benefit many students over its lifetime, rather than being restricted to one individual or one generation. The vision is to create a circular system: donate, restore, learn, loan, return and reuse. An instrument donated today could potentially introduce children to music for decades to come.

As Lili Olivero explains: “There must be instruments sitting unused in homes all over Gibraltar that could be inspiring our next generation of musicians.

“An instrument that has finished one chapter of its life could be just about to begin another in the hands of a child.

“Our message to Gibraltar is very simple: if you have an instrument, you no longer use, please give it a new life.”

DONATE AN INSTRUMENT

Do you have a musical instrument sitting unused at home? Give it a new life.

You can donate an instrument or sponsor the purchase of an instrument/s for Gibraltar’s mainstream educational facilities.

Contact the charity for further info:

Gibraltar Music Trust

Registered Charity No. 379

Email: gibraltarmusictrust@gmail.com

Website: gibraltarmusictrust.com (Coming soon)

WhatsApp: +350 54831000 Lili Olivero Founder

Instagram/Facebook: @gibraltarmusictrust