The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Raploch Youth is a project that aims to use an innovative methodology called ‘El Sistema’ to teach classical music to children from very early ages. The project has been going on for more than 30 years in Venezuela. This fantastic orchestra is indeed the flagship of an education system which gives 250,000 young people the chance to learn an instrument, getting them away from drugs, guns and crime in the shanty towns. The talented musicians of the National System of Venezuelan Youth and Children's Orchestras are a source of national pride, like football stars in other Latin American countries. Sir Simon Rattle, director of the Berlin Philharmonic, said that the country's youth orchestras in Venezuela were doing the most important work in classical music anywhere in the world. Now Scotland is taking the lead, establishing a similar system in Raploch, Stirling. The project will start in 2008 and it promises to provide a groundbreaking programme of social inclusion.