PRESTO project wins another award

Only one such prize is awarded per year in each sector in one category, and the award ceremony will take place at the international Erasmus+ conference in Budapest on 28 May.

The other participants in the project, which was led by the former Director of the Institute, Dr László Norbert Nemes, and which ran from 2021 to 2023 under the acronym PRESTO (Practices and Resources for Equipping Schools to Teach Music Online), were Caprice Oy (Helsinki, Finland), Dublin City University (Dublin, Ireland), the National Youth Choir of Scotland (Glasgow, Scotland, UK) and Sing Ireland (Limerick, Ireland). The collaboration has produced over 750 different educational materials, including lectures, instructional videos, methodological manuals and sound files.

Commenting on the Tempus Award for Excellence, Judit Rajk, Director of the Kodály Institute, said: "It is a great pleasure not only for the Kodály Institute, but also for the entire community of the Liszt Academy that our PRESTO programme has received such high recognition. Although the programme ended in 2023, the classroom, choral and instrumental materials it produced are available on our website, free of charge to all on the kodalyhub.com/presto portal". She added that it was particularly gratifying to receive this award from an independent professional body. "It also demonstrates that we carry out high-quality work at our university, maintain broad-ranging international relations, and that the work of our students and teachers, and Hungarian music education in general are recognised around the world. The names of Liszt and Kodály, without forgetting the other great predecessors, oblige us to continue their work and to make it even more colourful with the innovations of our time," she stressed.

As we reported earlier, PRESTO received a very high score in the peer review, 96 out of a possible 100 points, and was also awarded the International Good Practice rating by the judges.