Initiative and Unlimited Music Concert

Elif Ekin Kıran

Buket Göncüoğlu

Shiori Yoshida

Burcu Ölçer

Rin Asada

Jet

What did you do?

We held a piano concert in the school’s auditorium. The special part of this concert is that the audience was also able to perform on the piano that we performed on.

We gathered a small group of people including us for arranging the details about the concert, carrying out the speech part and playing the piano as initiators. We designed a poster that shows a detail about the participation of the audience as a performer, shared it in SNS groups and hung it on bulletin boards inside the school.

What were the outcomes?

The positive outcome for us was that we handled starting and carrying out an event in a place different from our usual environment and gained experience about being initiative and responsible. We think that this project will help us in our future projects because we learned several things. We hope that it was also beneficial for our university, in the sense that students who participated in this concert as an audience, performer or both are motivated to repeat this event or similar events related to sharing our talents and what we love. We also think that it was not a usual concert in a good way, because lots of people from the audience had the courage to stand up and perform after our playing, so we think that the motivation we want to give them was visible during the concert. Although they hesitated 2-3 times after our speaker told them that it was the audience’s turn to perform, after one of our players performed the same piece again because she believed that she could play better the second time, other audiences started to perform too. And it was unlimited in the sense that there was no ending time, and people just enjoyed the piano by playing or listening to it. 

What Sustainable Development Goals does your project connect to?

We aimed our project to connect to “ well being” and “quality education”. As far as we heard from our Japanese friends in the University of Shizuoka, there were no piano concerts in the school held by students. In our school in Turkey, musical events are an important part of our education and it helps students to take initiative in life, share talents-effort and inspire other people. We want the music lovers to be supported to take action in the future to share their music, with this concert. We believe that these kinds of activities help us be active and creative in our future careers.  

What did you do well?

We managed dividing the necessary tasks among each other and coordinated effectively. Our friends who are students of this school (not exchange students) helped us to get the necessary permissions from the students’ office, deHaan sensei helped us in the several steps of this project and our Japanese friends were really helpful and the language barrier was not a big problem. We think that the problem of language is especially important for the communication between us and the audience, thankfully we didn’t encounter any problem about this. 

What could you have done better?

We could have be more scheduled in the beginning stage of this project, because we had problems deciding on a project and changed our minds several times. If we were more planned in the thinking stage, we would have more time to gather a bigger audience because we would start earlier.  Also if we had used the time more effectively, we could have donated money we collected from the concert and made a more meaningful project. 

What did you learn?

Maybe the most important thing we learned while doing this project is that it is not the size of the act that matters but its impact that really matters. Of course our project’s impact is also not major but with those few people who participated in our project we could see how they are affected and influenced. Music has a great power to evoke and touch people’s souls and we believe we managed to do that to some extent. Other than this, we learned time and place management and also creative ways of making people participate, especially Japanese people. We believe that people who participated in the project now have a special place in their heart for that day.

How does this project connect to your future?

This project was a great step and educator for larger scale work. This project helped us to organize and encourage people. Since this kind of social impact project needs a great usage of social skills, we believe it helped us improve our social skills for further projects. 

How will this project be sustained/continued?

I think this project can be continued by enhancing its elements. What I mean by that is we can increase the number of people who would play and also the places it is held. This concert can be held in a big and famous scene and also we could get entrance/ concert fee as donation and that way we can donate to specific institutions. Even famous musicians can be included and in that way we can reach many more people. This concert can be held on a monthly or yearly basis so the project can be long term. 

What advice do you have for: future students, collaborators, other people?

For future students and collaborators our advice is maybe while trying to include more people, they can try to find more creative ideas by using social media or creative pamphlets. Of course, creating a smooth and enjoyable concert experience is also important.