WELCOME NOTES

A year ago, they ran their third Welcome Notes training at the Spring House in
Amsterdam, reaching over 20 musicians from the UK, Italy, Portugal, Belgium,
Germany and the Netherlands each! The training was led by Otto de Jong, Hanno
Tomassen and special guest Darren Abrahams.

The aim of the Welcome Notes project is to use music to connect with refugees in
communities across Europe, offering musicians practical skills to create safe
musical spaces for people living with grief, loss and uncertainty. In 20ey trained 37
musicians and led 25 workshops in refugee centers across the Netherlands,
reaching approximately 500 refugee participants.
WHY MUSIC?
‘You may be poor, you may only have a ramshackle house, you
may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope.’
Nelson Mandela
Where war has raged, people need everything to return to life: food, water,
shelter, clothing, medicine. But more than anything, people need hope. To
reconcile, people need empathy. To heal, people need connection and
community.
Music creates empathy, builds connection and gives hope.
WHO THEY ARE
‘If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only
happen through music.’ 
Jimi Hendrix
Since 1999, they’ve been using the power of music for peace-building,
connecting people, empowering musicians as social activists, and training
local youth as change-makers.
Their long-term commitment allows our participants the time to develop
skills and talents, process grief and loss, and build bridges of reconciliation
in societies divided by recent or ongoing conflict.