Concept
While performances are professionally-staged events, the Global Rock Challenge is about having fun along the way. Students, teachers, parents and communities work together over many months helping to prepare the school's performance.
A research project led by the Pro-Vice Chancellor of Sydney University, Don Nutbeam in 1999-2001, found that participants in the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge in Sydney secondary schools had higher self-esteem than the control group of schools who did not participate in the event; that participants smoked less tobacco and marijuana and drank less alcohol than the control group. The PhD candidate who undertook the research, Dr Rose Grunstein also found that students in participating schools but not in the actual team also had lower propensities to smoke, drink excessive alcohol or take other drugs.
Since then many State and Government Health and Education Departments have put their support behind the event. The Australian Department of Health and Ageing have sponsored the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge television specials with various tobacco, alcohol and drug prevention messages for 18 years.
Almost a million young people aged 11 to 19 have now performed on stage. In 2005, 100,000 young people from 800 schools took part in one of the hundreds of shows staged worldwide.
Over 400 schools and 40,000 students competed in 50 Rock Eisteddfod Challenge shows in 17 regions across Australia in 2006.
Read more about this topic: Rock Eisteddfod Challenge
Famous quotes containing the word concept:
“By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“It is impossible to dissociate language from science or science from language, because every natural science always involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based; the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind; and the words in which the concepts are expressed. To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality.”
—Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794)