CITY CHILDREN’S CHOIR MALI LICEUM is a city children’s choir that works within the Music Center and is a junior of the City Chamber Choir Liceum. It was founded in October 2008, and after a several-year break, it was reactivated at the end of 2016. The choir consists of elementary school students aged nine (rarely of younger students) to fifteen, i.e. students from the third to the eighth grade, from the territory of the city of Kragujevac, who demonstrate exceptional musical abilities related to vocal interpretation and have affinity for beautiful and polyphonic choral singing. The repertoire of the choir is usually three-voiced artistic choral music a capella (without instrumental accompaniment), as well as the interpretation of other choral creations within the planned projects. The Mali Liceum Children’s Choir is conceived as an ensemble that unites the best choristers from the territory of the City, who will participate in projects important for the City, but also for the entire school, educational, and overall cultural and artistic activity. Choral singing contributes to the development of a whole range of predispositions, primarily musical, to the acquisition of a range of competencies, but also the cultivation of affinities such as a sense of beauty, orientation towards true artistic values, perseverance in teamwork, openness to stage performance and more.
Mr. Biljana Bozic is a graduate music pedagogue, a Master of Arts in the field of General Music Pedagogy, as well as a graduate librarian. Fields of interest are: music pedagogy in primary and secondary education, application of information technologies in the teaching of musical culture, work with children’s choir and choir conducting, and library and information activities. She is employed as the head of the Library of the Faculty of Philology and Arts at the University of Kragujevac.
In the first period of her professional activity, her determination in her work was tied to musical art through teaching work, for a little more than a decade. Her artistic work was directed both to the teaching and the management of the children’s choir of the upper grades of the elementary school. She actively participates in the affirmation of children’s choral music. In her work on a cappella three-voiced and four-voiced singing with the children’s choir, she achieved the most significant successes for Kragujevac so far and received awards at competitions in the country. She directed the choirs of Jovan Popovic, Radoje Domanovic elementary schools and, in the longest period of work of ten years, the choir of the Stanislav Sremcevic school. Together with prof. Dr. Miloje Nikolic, she initiated the idea of starting a children’s choir. She was one of the founders, conductor, and artistic director (2009-2011) of the city children’s choir Liceum juvenum (Little Liceum), a junior school of AKH Liceum from Kragujevac. That period of three years was marked by participation in several projects, of which we highlight: Big School Class (music composer Zoran Hristic), Dirifle’s Requiem in the First Kragujevac High School, performances in Kragujevac elementary schools, the Academy of Saint Sava in the Joakim Vujic Theater, a performance in the Children’s Theater with ethno group Zavet, a concert in the First Kragujevac High School with an a cappella program and others. The choir stopped working when, after preparing the program for a year, and fifteen days before the competition, there was a problem to provide material means for transportation and registration fees for the choir competition in Bijeljina.
Biljana began her professional activity in library and information activities at the Teaching Department in Kragujevac of the Faculty of Music and Arts from Belgrade, and then continued her work at the Faculty of Philology and Arts of the University of Kragujevac. She designed the concept of work and the structure of the FILUM Library, both in terms of formation and cataloging, as well as in the way of using the funds, corresponding at the same time to the modern framework of librarianship, the requirements of the unique structure of the Faculty and the fact that the Faculty is still located in several locations. She initiated and achieved the inclusion of the FILUM Library in the National Library and Information System COBISS.SR (since 2005), actively integrating all segments of the system. She is improving through courses, seminars, and visits to conferences and related libraries in the country and abroad (Slovenia, Sweden, Austria, and Germany). In the field of cataloging, in addition to working in all segments of the software, we especially highlight work on periodicals, analytical processing of components, unique funds of musicals, and electronic carriers of information, primarily sound. The substantive, quantitative, and, above all, qualitative distinctiveness of the FILUM Library’s fund was established and determined by careful planning book procurement and permanent work on obtaining donations. In twenty-two years of work in librarianship, she received gifts and donations of great material, but above all, cultural value.
In her work, she had the privilege of creating and fostering the culture of children’s choral music and the privilege of creating the FILUM Library from the first library unit.