School choirs, which have been fading away across the country, have received a boost from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) through a funded programme aimed at reviving music in the education system.

The Guyana Teachers Union North Branch (GTUNB) received a grant of US$7,000 from the IDB yesterday to fund the ‘Revival of Music as Art’ project. Twelve schools including three primary schools have been selected for the pilot project.

Schools with struggling choirs and others which never had a choir were favoured among the initial batch, according to Gem Rohelhr who is spearheading the project.

Marco Nicola, IDB Representative said the IDB fosters cultural development at the community level through its Cultural Development in the Field Programme. He noted that Guyana has been awarded this grant for some time in consecutive years, adding that the IDB looked forward to as many proposals as possible.

Rohelhr, who is Chairman of the Women’s Affair Committee of the GTUNB, said music has always been part of schools largely through the initiative of deceased educator, Edith Pieters. She said after Pieters’s death the tradition started to fade away and now there are just a few existing choirs in schools. However, she said, the project will change this one school at a time, and expressed gratitude to the IDB.

In previous years, the Arts Forum Inc, publishers of The Arts Journal; Conservation International Guyana and the Varqa Foundation among others were awarded similar grants.