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Levende Musik i Skolen - Live Music in Schools

LMS offers high quality live music to schools all over Denmark, and in that way provide pupils with a direct and deeper understanding of the professional music scene.

LMS is a non-profit organization established in 1992 and funded by the Danish Arts Foundation. It serves as a national competence center, and besides school concerts, it is the Danish development agency and creative lab in the field of professional music for children and with children. It is a leading force in implementing what Unesco calls Arts Education: letting the world of art meet the world of education in a way that allows the pupils to experience, enjoy, reflect, express and learn. The common goal being that children as well as art and school benefit from the encounter.

Furthermore, LMS functions as an information pool for general and specific information on school concerts and related topics. As such LMS is often consulted by schools, musicians, cultural workers, municipalities etc. In addition to this, LMS arranges an annual festival for school concerts (see more below) along with a range of ad hoc seminars, conferences etc.

Nationally as well as internationally, LMS has established a solid network of contacts to sister organizations, to the music world, to the education system and to other cultural partners. Additionally, LMS is involved in a substantial amount of collaboration on projects, capacity building and exchange.

School Concerts

In Denmark LMS arranges approximately 3000 concerts a year with professional live music in schools reaching around 300.000 pupils.

The concerts provide a great cultural and musical experience combined with an approach to concrete learning. All musical genres are introduced, and for each concert, LMS prepares a study material as well as audio and video examples for use in the class room before or after the concert.

Each year in November, an indendendent professional committee selects new music groups, and makes up a versatile season programme for the coming school year. The LMS-committee consists of six persons, all deeply rooted in their respective areas of music. Each member participates for a three-year period, and each year two new members replace leaving members.

LMS is the national agency assuring constant development in the field. To ensure that the concerts reach the target group, a producer team is connected to each project. The producers collaborates with the musicians on the preparation and transmission of the concerts as well as on the composition of the study material. It is essential that each concert accentuates the strengths of the respective musician/band in order to assure the authenticity of the music the pupils meet.

Building networks

LMS school concerts are organized as a subscription model in which municipalities pay a price-per-pupil, and henceforth they are ensured concerts and study materials for all of their school children. The model is structured with contact persons in every school and in every municipality. At present more than 60 of the 98 municipalities in Denmark are subscribing to the model. Aside from securing smooth planning and running of the many concerts, the networks often have the positive side effect of establishing contacts between teachers of different schools and the cultural and educational department in the municipal administration.

Koncertløftet

LMS has embarked in an ambitious cooperation with symphony orchestras and other ensembles with public funding in order to form an alliance that can guarantee a least one school concert per year for every child across the country from 2025.

KulturPakker

LMS is a partner in KulturPakker (“Culture packages”), which is a unique cooperation with theater and dance for children organized in a structure resembling the school concerts as described above. The aim is similar: bringing art to the pupils, and encourage teachers to benefit didactically from the artistic input. So far KulturPakker is a reality in three Danish municipalities: Haderslev, Kalundborg and Skanderborg.
Read more at kulturpakker.dk

LMS Festival

Every year at the end of September/beginning of October, LMS arranges a festival presenting a variety of the current concert productions. The festival is arranged in cooperation with a different municipality every year, and aside from contacts from schools and municipalities, it attracts professional producers and concert organisers from all over Denmark as well as from other countries. Simultaneously, local pupils get wonderful concert experiences during the two festival days. Added to this, the festival offers workshops, conferences etc. – and unmistakably a great deal of networking.
Learn more at lmsfestival.dk

KulturCrew

For some years LMS and Teatercentrum have worked with involving pupils in the planning and practical organisation of school concerts and other events. A methodology for courses has been developed in order to enable the schools to have a group of pupils qualify for deciding on programs, planning practical aspects, doing PR, presenting etc.
See the KulturCrew website.