April 30, 2019
AIT Press Release #: PR-1919
20 students and educators from Taiwan’s top music high schools will participant in a three week AIT@40 Youth Leadership Exchange Program in Cleveland, Ohio from May 5 to May 23 titled “Fostering Youth Leadership in the U.S. and Taiwan through Music and Social Action” organized by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the Youth Programs Division at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), World Learning, and the Cleveland Council on World Affairs.
This is AIT’s first-ever high school exchange program for Taiwan students.
While in Cleveland, the Taiwan participants will attend lectures, site visits, workshops, and joint musical performances. This program will expose educators and youth from Taiwan and the United States to the growing movement to use music to promote community engagement and social change.
Cleveland, Ohio is an ideal location for this activity as it is home to the Cleveland Orchestra and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Cleveland is also not far from several renowned U.S. music schools and conservatories, including the Cleveland Institute of Music at Case Western Reserve University, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the Conservatory at Baldwin Wallace University.
In the fall of 2019, five U.S. student musicians from Cleveland will travel to Taiwan for a reciprocal exchange.
This project is inspired by past ECA programs in Taiwan like American Music Abroad and OneBeat. It is also the result of ongoing collaboration between AIT, National Wuling Senior High School, National Hsinchu Senior High School, Taichung Municipal Taichung Second Senior High School, Kaohsiung Municipal Senior High School, and Steinway Artist Gwhyneth Chen, a U.S. educated artist-in-residence in Taiwan’s secondary school system.
This program is part of a yearlong series of activities to celebrate the 40th anniversary of AIT and the Taiwan Relations Act. For more information about this activity and other AIT@40 activities, please visit AIT’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/AIT.Social.Media.
For more information about the city of Cleveland, please visit the Destination Cleveland website, https://www.thisiscleveland.com/.
