ALEKSANDAR CARIĆ ZAR

 Aleksandar Carić has been working since 2008 as the artistic director of the “Orquestra Criativa de Santa Maria da Feira” project for the City Hall of Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal. This community project focuses on socio-educational work directed at non-musicians and the general population, aiming to make music accessible to all—men, women, children of all ages, and from all social backgrounds.

In sixteen years of activity, more than thirteen thousand participants, aged between three and ninety-eight, have been part of the orchestra in various roles, from socially disadvantaged groups to the most distinguished members of society, as well as people with disabilities.

The orchestra is the core of a long-term inclusion project that imposes no particular conditions for participation. However, throughout the creative process, specific talents are constantly detected with great care, and thus roles are distributed within this large ensemble, which frequently includes more than one hundred and fifty participants on the same stage. The project is funded by the City Hall of Santa Maria da Feira but has also received support from the Directorate-General for Arts of Portugal and the European Union.

For fifteen years, Aleksandar Carić worked in Italy and other European countries for the “International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation” under the MUS-E program, as well as other EU-supported projects. The foundation, present in sixteen countries, funds a vast number of artistic workshops. These workshops naturally include identifying the talents and preferences of the participants, with the aim of finding suitable roles for everyone and making participation possible, with the goal of enhancing each participant’s self-esteem.

Throughout more than thirty years of artistic and educational work, Aleksandar Carić has conducted performances, workshops, and conferences in countries across various continents: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, the United States of America, Armenia, South Africa, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, France, Italy, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Greece.

Since 2003, Aleksandar has been the artistic director of the international program for the Uličnih Svirača Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, an event that attracts a large audience due to its diverse street arts cultural program. Over the 20 years of the festival, artists from more than thirty countries from all continents have been featured. He has also participated in the organization and selection of the program for similar festivals in Italy and Portugal, presenting Serbian artists on several occasions.

As a group leader or head of an international delegation, Aleksandar Carić has been involved in numerous EU-funded projects under the Europe for Citizens, Creative Europe, and Erasmus+ programs. These projects always involved many participants and were based on intense international collaboration.

Since 2024, he has been the musical director of the Sounding the Difference project at FIMS.