“Amplified girls”: the rock colony for children and adolescents

This Monday began a rock colony for children and adolescents, which will take place at the Martín Coronado Secondary School (Tres de Febrero) until next Saturday, July 22. This is a week of intensive rock workshops by Chicas Amplified, a non-profit civil society community organization made up of musicians, artists, coaches and educators. Their mission, as explained on their website, is to empower girls and girls through music, to strengthen their self-esteem, generate bonds of solidarity, promote their protagonism, promote critical thinking and encourage collective creation, with emphasis on social inclusion and respect for diversity. The idea arose when some of us participated in the Girls Rock Camp Brazil that had already been running for four editions. There we knew the dynamics, “said the creators of the organization and added: “On the way back we decided to bring the experience to our country and we began to contact other musicians, teachers, artists, sound techniques and designers to make it a reality. ” They started in 2016 with intensive one-day workshops, and two years later they made the one-week colony project a reality: “With a lot of effort we did it,” they recalled. This is the third edition, which has 57 participants between 7 and 17 years old from the Federal Capital and the Buenos Aires suburbs, who meet in nine bands to implement what they have learned. From Filo.news we talk to them to know the behind the scenes, the impact of rock on the new generations and more.  Filo News: How did you manage to make the colony in Argentina? What context did they encounter? Amplified Girls: Making the colony a reality in our country was a great challenge. As our project is based on social inclusion and diversity, we try to ensure that all children who wish to register can do so, so we offer 100% scholarships for those who apply. For this we depend on our fair, recitals and parties that we organize to raise funds and the collaboration of the community that supports the project wholeheartedly. It is a self-managed project and we want it to stay that way. That is why at the end of the colony we will make an edition of our festival -Fuegas Fest- which will also be a way to celebrate a new edition of the colony faced with so much effort and dedication. The colony was very well received when we started making it. It is something that attracts attention and summons many people, either to collaborate in the dictation of workshops or to register girls and boys. But we also encounter resistance and some questions as it is a proposal aimed at children and diverse adolescents. The heart of our project is to promote empowerment in a safe environment where participants feel comfortable and strengthen their self-esteem through music and friendship, so that girls and girls recover that prominence that was historically taken from them. We believe that this is a way to guarantee an emancipatory space. Filo News: How do you think rock impacts the new generations? C.A.: We noticed that rock no longer has the weight it once had in the music scene, but we believe that it is a genre (or a conglomeration of genres) that due to its format allows us to work together and promotes collective creation, something that perhaps is not seen so much with other genres. The use of instruments gives it that analog and artisanal character that we find very valuable for the participants to have a more complete and enriching experience. It is also a type of music that strongly impacts the attitudinal and we take advantage of that to work on stage management and have a good time. Filo News: What are the rock colonies and what can you tell us about the next edition? How many people signed up? Of what ages and from what areas of the country? C.A.: The colony consists of a full-time week: in the morning the instrument workshops are developed (guitar, bass, keyboard, drums and voice) and in the afternoon each band rehearses and attends other workshops (design of flyers, recording of video clips, stencil, self-defense, History of women and dissidents in rock, among others). Bands compose a song during the week, forge an identity, write the lyrics collectively. And Saturday is the closing show in which all the bands show their compositions for their families and friends. And the show is a party, they are all transformed by the experience of the colony. 

Original source in Spanish