At a Night School in Seoul, people with severe disabilities and people with developmental disabilities gather once a week and collaborate to create songs. A member of the Taizé Community in the Catholic Peace Weekly gives the readers a look at their efforts.
Under the motto,' We make our own songs', they tell their stories through songs. A songbook containing sheet music and activity photos of 45 songs created here from February 2022 to December 2023 has been released. The album ‘Our March’ included the following song.
"Every Thursday we go here and there, take a walk around the neighborhood / Let's get out of the facility and go outside. I want to live as I want. / I want to ride the buses and subway. We've been saying the same thing for too long. / Still we need to sing. When we march, the world changes."
On the Nodeul Song Factory website (nonogong.kr), you can listen to the songs they wrote and sang themselves and download sheet music and sound sources. This was made possible through the ‘Seoul-type rights-centered public jobs customized for people with severe disabilities’ project. The ‘cultural and artistic activities’, ‘rights advocacy activities’, and ‘disability awareness improvement activities’ of students with severe disabilities were recognized as customized labor. The students who participated were able to say to others that they were ‘going to work’ for the first time in their lives and received wages. This public job, a one-year contract position, was obtained by Nodeul Night School as a ‘part of the share’ of disabled people excluded from work after occupying and fighting the Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled for three months.
This year, the city of Seoul cut its entire budget for rights-centered customized jobs. As a result, 350 severely disabled people and 50 dedicated workers lost their jobs. The city of Seoul started it as a pilot project in July 2020 and is spreading it nationwide, but this has been eliminated in Seoul. Still, the ‘workers’ at Nodeul Song Factory gather every week to sing. The reason the 76-page songbook costs 38,000 won is to raise publicity and raise funds for the continuation of this song factory.
Maria the painter with Down syndrome, was able to complete her college education thanks to the great efforts of her parents, but she was unable to find a job and because of the prejudiced gaze towards her, she suffered from gaze obsession and schizophrenia. She was healed with her painting and socializing with others. She received a lot of love for ‘Our Blues’.
The writer hopes the new songs will continue to be heard at the somewhat noisy but wonderful’ Song Factory in the glass building behind Horse Chestnut Park in Seoul. You don't have to be a genius. We await the day when the songs created together by our neighbors and citizens, the severely disabled and the developmentally disabled, will be loved like the drama, 'Our Blues'.
