Symphony Orchestra is a program for young people in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, offering music laboratories (Oficina de Música) and putting on educational concerts of classical and popular Brazilian music primarily addressing students in public schools. The initiative’s main aim is to introduce adolescents – but also the adults around them – to the world of art, encouraging them to go to concerts, museums and other cultural centers, but also providing continuous reference to the basic subjects they study at school, such as Portuguese, mathematics, history, politics and the plastic arts. Students are required to assiduously attend theoretical and practical lessons and frequent individual and group exercise sessions, thus inculcating the habit of study and concentration. In 2009, 150 students were offered places in the orchestra and over 5,000 people in the West Zone were involved in the educational concerts, which were held one every two weeks.
