The Moscow Project

Family Reunion Musical Tour – Summer 2019

What am I proposing?

A 5 – 10 day tour in July/August 2019 of Moscow and, perhaps, other cities, performing in the chorus of a new Peace Child show, based on much loved songs by David Gordon, and newly composed songs for this tour. The Peace Child show brought together young people from the USA and the old Soviet Union, in 1985/86, to build bridges and advocate for peace. This reunion tour aims to do the same, in a world with increasing worldwide tensions.

This trip would also allow time for tourism – trips to the circus, the Kremlin, monasteries etc. It is an ideal chance to experience the Moscow of today and stand up for peace. Plus a big party. We’ll be making a documentary to capture participants’ feelings about what it felt like in 1985/6, and what it feels like now from the perspective of their children.

Cost: Visas are about $150. Flights? From UK about $300 and from USA, about $1,000; Hotels? For a family (2 adults, 2 children) for 5 nights, from about $35 in a Hostel dorm to $10,000 at the Hilton Moscow. A rough total? $1,500 + meals at a halfway decent hotel.

How did it come about?

I, David Woollcombe, the initiator and driving force behind the Peace Child show in the 1980s, was just in Moscow, with Stas Namin, and we agreed that in a world of increasing global tension, peace and maintaining peace is again becoming a key concern.

To us, sitting in a Moscow Theatre watching great Russian artists and musicians performing brilliantly – the idea of reuniting the members of the 1985/86 and later Peace Child tours was an attractive one to both of us. This highlights that despite global tension, people from all over the world want the same things, peace and freedom to live how they want.

Stas wants to have a Tour that visited exactly the same cities as we visited in 1985/86 – Moscow, Ulyanovsk, Artek – and then the same cities in North America. I wondered if we might start the tour in Somerset – where a brilliant International production was mounted by the Tacchi Morris Peace Theatre and the Monkton Heathfield School.

I received an e-mail from Kazz Regelman – who was on the ’85 Tour, which helped her better understand her roots and Russian ancestry and how important people like her are for building peace, stated that; “I would definitely be interested in the Stas Namin reunion show. I’ve got two daughters now the perfect age, both theater kids: 12 and 14, currently. So, count us in!”

Then Jenny Little, from the ’85 tour, and her daughter, Georgia said: “Count us in!” Ian Gilman (also ’85 Tour) also says he’s “happy to help get the word out and organize” – and I spoke to other members that participated on the original tour, and there has been increasing interest and motivation to take part.

A huge, HUGE thank you to all of you!! You’ve motivated me to make the proposed Peace Child Family Reunion tour a reality.

What might we hope to achieve?

Perhaps we might reignite the traditional Soviet appeal: “Mir y Drusba” (peace and friendship).

A Peace Child show in Moscow in 2019 could help to start people thinking about the fact that we have bigger fish to fry.

The bigger fish:

As always throughout history, we cannot be wasting our intellectual energy, and trillions of dollars worth of our global treasure, on hatred, on fear, on military weapons and violence. We have bigger things to worry about. Much, much bigger things. And top of the list, I would put climate change.

Climate Change:

It is 12 years since Nick Stern made his famous Sibylline Books analogy, stating that the cost of combatting climate change would be 1% of GDP if we started tackling it seriously then (in 2006), 3% in 10 years time; 6% if we waited 20 years.

I have followed this issue since 1992 when, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, I started focusing on the environment – an issue that young people from around the world were telling me greatly concerned them. I led a project that took adapted the Peace Child show to be focused on environmental issues, that led to us performing at the Grande Salle of the UN in Geneva to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Gorbachev’s Green Cross organization.

 

 

Recently I was lucky enough to take part in the Al Gore Climate Reality training in Pittsburgh last year – and started developing a new version of the Geneva Climate Change Peace Child. I aim to continue developing this with the participants of the Family Reunion Tour, with parts in Russian and English.

Peace:

It is often said that the human family would come together to fight a common enemy – like an invasion from another planet. But the biggest common enemy, at the moment, does not come from another planet. It comes from our own – and our own activities upon it.

Most of us believe that Elon Musk – or someone like him – will find a clever techno-fix to avoid it. But Climate Change is still a great way to bring us all together for a common goal.

We can think of many others – like Education for All, Health for All, Human Rights for All, Jobs for All – or the questions of How to build a Green, sustainable Economy? How to stop cultural and religious differences leading to conflict? All these issues come up in our new Peace Child play – and they are all resolved in an Action Plan that is the ultimate call to action of the show.

This is a promising time for promoting peace using collaboration on climate change. As a nation, Russia is very devoted to nature, 2017 was a Year of Ecology in Russia. They trained 120,000 teachers to teach sustainable development and I was hugely impressed that the school pupils I met with while I was in Moscow were extremely knowledgeable and interested in climate change.

So – I think that now is a perfect time to hold a Family Reunion Tour in Moscow in 2019, to build togetherness and promote peace.

So please, get in touch! Email me David@peacechild.org. 

Thanks,  David

 

 


Written by David Woollcombe our Chairman of the Board here at Peace Child. 


Do you want to blog for us? Email editor@peacechild.org for more information today.

Recent Posts