Music helps people grow together and overcome diversity. This is what the Mani Bianche Roma Choir (White Hands Choir, Rome) strives to communicate during its performances, which offer music education, integration and social inclusion to children and teens with both normal and impaired hearing. The members of the choir sing together with white-gloved hands and, as they sing, they simultaneously act out the words of the songs through signs.
This type of innovative musical performance was inspired by the famous system devised by Maestro José Antonio Abreu of Venezuela, who for the past forty years has been using music to empower streets children and rescue them from crime and drugs. The first Manos Blancas Choir, which was set up in Venezuela in 1999 by Naibeth Garcia, brought together children with hearing, visual, cognitive, motor and autistic impairments, encouraging them to participate in each performance according to their preferred expressive mediums. Since then, the experience has been imitated, adapted and enriched in many countries around the world.