Update - June 1996

Centred around the Kuk Club - owned by the University of Sarajevo - and managed by the Medical Students Association: the Kuk Project was conceived in Sarajevo in September 1995, a month which saw The Serious Road Trip (TSRT) air-lift initial Drake Music equipment into the city and establish pilot music therapy outreach programmes that ran from October until February 1996. The Kuk Project now employs two expatriate lead officers - Simon Glinn and Bennett Hogg, three local community musicians and a local project assistant.

The general principle of the Kuk project is to create opportunities for people - of all ages, abilities and needs - to participate in music making and listening. To achieve this, TSRT is establishing a local organisation known as Community Music Sarajevo with two specific objectives: permanently re-open Kuk as a fully equipped and accessible performance space with a mixed programme for all young people: to train and employ competent workshop facilitators in group percussion work and Drake Music Project techniques, which enable people with special needs - including severely physically disabled people to be creative with music.

The Project is working to establish a digital studio, fully adapted for access to severely disabled people, within premises of the Faculty of Medicine situated on the floor above the Kuk Club; the Project also has shared access to the club for staging large workshops, events and training in sound production, and is developing a rehearsal studio as part of the complex. The Kuk Project is co-operating with other organisations with programmes of musical events including Obala Gallery and Club Obala, Trust Sarajevo, Sloga, Radio Zid, Radio 99 and numerous NGOs.

To date the Kuk Project has arranged six concerts at the Kuk Club and is currently working with several name British rock groups with a view to having them perform in Sarajevo as part of the Kuk programme in August. Since March 1996 four students of the Project have conducted outreach programmes on a weekly basis in three special needs institutes - Pazaric Psychiatric Institute, Vladimir Nazor Special School, and the Centre for Speech and Hearing Rehabilitation. Work will shortly begin on developing access to the premises in the Faculty building to wheel chair users. This will enable the use of the studio for further groups including Members of the BiH Cerebral Palsy Association.

The project is supported by an ad hoc advisory panel in the UK: Professor Nigel Osborne of Edinburgh University, Adele Drake of Drake Music Project, Phil Manning of Beats, Joe Hamilton of The Avenue Centre, Angela McCarthy of Earthsong, Alison Tickell of Community Music (London), Ben Higham of Community Music East, Kingston University's Gateway School of Music Technology and Doctor Raymond McDonald of Glasgow University.

The Dobra Kadabra clowns are back in town, following a successful tour of Central Bosnia. During their six-week programme, they visited schools, orphanages, and refugee centres. They also gave a number of unplanned performances, arriving in towns and simply putting on an impromptu show there and then. Supported by funds from the Daily Telegraph Christmas Appeal, Dobra held a total of seventy-three shows, performing in areas that previous clowning tours had been unable to reach, such as Gorazde and the Serbian areas Dobaj and Rogatica.

Two or three shows a day, six days a week meant a lot of hard work for the members Johnnie K, Caroline Moore, Simone Mines, Pip Dance and Meni Kojaman. Long hours of driving by Meni in their colourful Dodge Personnel Carrier (kindly donated by Railtrack) allowed them to touch the lives of thousands of children and adults.

Johnnie's slapstick comedy, Pip's expert juggling and Simone's enthralling magic tricks were all enthusiastically received, while Caroline in her Tweety Bird disguise had whole audiences up and dancing. Life-size dancing puppets and face painting completed the show leaving the audience exhilarated - everyone had forgotten their problems, at least for one day.

Olovo School Meals, TSRT's feeding programme for 2,700 schoolchildren in the former front-line town of Olovo, (50 km north-east of Sarajevo), continues in eight schools in the Olovo region. With the support of TSRT and the UN World Food Programme, 1,400 of these children are receiving daily meals, administered by the schools themselves and by the two bakeries in Olovo.

Prior to the end of April, all 2,700 beneficiaries were fed by TSRT and local staff, using funds raised by the Help! album and the Daily Telegraph's Christmas Appeal for Bosnia. Control of the project has now been transferred from TSRT to the local schools and bakeries - the original aim of the project - but TSRT will continue to be involved until the end of the current school year on 21st June. TSRT are currently involved in discussions with the local Red Cross about the continuation of the project during the next school year.

By implementing the Olovo School Meals project, and making it a success, we have been able to draw attention to the plight of the communities in the area, and encourage other organisations to contribute. As a result, other NGO's including Equilibre, Feed the Children, the United Methodist Committee on Relief and World Vision International have all examined ways in which they could help provide relief to the Municipality. In response to direct negotiations with TSRT, both UNHCR and the World Food Programme have agreed to direct more food aid to selected beneficiary target groups in Olovo. During the last two months, TSRT has also been active on behalf of the World Health Organisation and three of the NGO's mentioned above, distributing clothing, footwear and hygiene products in the region to the schools and to the War Invalids' Association in Olovo.

Having been the only NGO to have a full-time presence in Olovo since the start of the war, TSRT has recently been consulted by both Catholic Relief Services and Caritas Germany to provide a report on the area. The involvement of these agencies is expected to bring a combined total of more than two million US dollars to the region for reconstruction work.

TSRT is currently reviewing the possibility of establishing a presence in Africa, with plans to launch a project in Niger before the end of the year. Niger is one of the world's poorest countries, with much of the population dependent on subsistence agriculture. TSRT will be focussing particularly on projects aimed at helping the Tuareg, a nomadic people living in the arid north of the country, who have suffered severely in recent years from both famine and war, threatening the destruction not merely of their traditional way of life, but even of the Tuareg themselves as a people.

TSRT's project in Romania last year, Mania 4 Romania, emphasised the value of, and the need for, the creative arts when working with children with special needs. So far this year TSRT has returned to Romania with two projects.

In the Botosani region, Jutta Feuerstein, a trained special needs therapist, returned in April to provide training workshops for staff at Ionaseni Orphanage in the use of a sensory stimulation room for disabled children.

The idea of the sensory stimulation room originally comes from Holland. For a long time there hasn't been any such facility to improve the abilities of severely mentally and physically disabled children and adults in Romania. The stimulation room is a prepared environment where disabled people can undergo a variety of therapeutic experiences. Like all little children growing up, they learn through touching, watching, oral experiences and imitating. The stimulation room considers all four senses: auditory, tactile, visual and smell. With certain facilitates and toys every single sense can be stimulated. Jutta will also return later in the year with more equipment for the stimulation room set up last summer and investigate sourcing materials on location.

In Bucharest, Richard Proctor, a musician and performer has been working since March, providing circus training for the children and staff of the local NGO 'Parada' which promotes the social integration of street children through artistic and cultural activities.

In the course of our projects in Eastern Europe, we have repeatedly heard people discuss the situation in Albania. Several aid organisations working in Albania, hearing of our aid programmes for children and young people, have also urged us to develop similar projects there.

In November 1995, three members of TSRT-France visited Albania. The visit enabled us to evaluate the situation, identify needs and to seek local and international partners.

Following on from this, TSRT has drawn up an aid programme to be implemented in thirty-five target schools and three orphanages, throughout Albania. The planned programme has two main objectives: the provision and distribution of school materials and sports equipment, and the provision of creative circus-style workshops and team sport activities.

TSRT-France intends to leave for Albania in July for a provisional programme lasting approximately ten weeks.

The Serious Road Trip is a voluntary humanitarian organization committed primarily to helping children in regions affected by war, poverty or natural disasters. The Serious Road Trip endeavours to meet both the material and psycho-social needs of target groups, and to raise awareness of their plight in the hope of encouraging others to take similar action.

For more information, contact:

The Serious Road Trip
61, Bayham Place
Camden, London NW1 0ET
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-71-916-9333
Fax: +44-71-916-9335
Mail: srt@roadtrip.demon.co.uk