Franka Verhagen has been the programme director at Dream Orchestra since 2019 and is responsible for project management, administration and leading a team of teachers, staff and volunteers.
Together with the artistic director Ron Álvarez, she has developed the organisation’s learning model, which serves as the basis for the training of the teachers who have joined the team over the past five years. In 2021, she published, together with Ron Álvarez, Dream Orchestra’s Learning Model, and in 2023, the book Storytelling in the Orchestra. In 2021, she joined the board of directors.
With a professional background as a classical guitarist and music pedagogue, graduated from the Maastricht Conservatorium, she lived and worked for 33 years in Venezuela, where she gained extensive experience in the field of music education in El Sistema, a cultural and social programme that offers children and young people from low-income backgrounds the opportunity to learn to play an instrument in a symphony orchestra. In addition to her activities as a performer, she worked at the Universidad Nacional Experimental de las Artes in Caracas for 23 years as an associate professor of guitar and of ear training, where she devised her own strategies to make ear training and music analysis more accessible to students. As a study coordinator, she participated in the design and implementation of innovative procedures for the accreditation of experience and knowledge.
In 2010, she designed a curriculum for El Sistema, together with students and teachers, according to an andragogical concept. Within the framework of this programme, she led a large administrative and academic team for the following nine years and, together with them, trained more than 1,200 music teachers and conductors of orchestras and choirs.
In addition to her work with Dream Orchestra, she has used her broad international experience in music education and cultural management as a consultant for programmes in Latin America and Europe, to build strong teams capable of developing meaningful arts education both in and outside of schools.
