Westlake Primary School espouses the ideal that good education is the key to the advancement of the Westlake Community where this school is situated, especially considering that access to good schools has been problematic and expensive for this community. The journey started about 11 years ago when the education department collaborated with private stakeholders to have the school built.
The Ottery Road Methodist Primary School is in a nearby suburb and in the past a number of learners from Ottery have come to Beau Soleil to join the Ifidyoli Ensemble on Saturdays. In 2012 a satellite project was started at the Ottery School on two mornings per week. Suzuki Method Violin teacher Titia Blake started classes of enthusiastic young violinists and Maya Maile started a cello class.
The first String Development Project at Beau Soleil began near the end of 1999 when staff member Kathleen Garrity and her sister Margaret Hamann decided to follow the example of the well known teacher Sheila Nelson, whose wonderful work they had seen at an ESTA conference in England. Ms Nelson had developed her own method to teach group s of underprivileged children to play stringed instruments in the Tower Hamlet Project in London. Our founder group was named the Ifidyoli Ensemble and it consisted of sixteen children from Site B, Khayelitsha who came to the Music Centre on Saturday mornings to play the violin.
BSMAT/Ifidyoli Project Management Team
Sarah Evans, Siyathemba Nteta, Fiona Grayer