North America

Decolonizing the Music Room has announced the first annual Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival, happening online on Saturday, March 13, 2021, as part of their 2021 programming.

OrchKids is now accepting woodwind, brass, musicianship, and string applications for their next class of OrchKids Teaching Fellows, Fall 2021 – Spring 2023.

Might your organization be ready to apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts? Challenge Grants are for first-time applicants, and they support smaller organizations (that’s us) for projects in all artistic disciplines that extend the reach of the arts to populations that are underserved.

Over the course of a week in mid-February, members of El Sistema USA met for the annual El Sistema USA Symposium and Seminario. Permeating this year’s sessions were the twin pandemics our country has grappled with for the past year: COVID-19 and systemic racism. El Sistema programs have had to confront the impacts of these crises at the local community level, and they had a lot to share.

On Day Two of the El Sistema USA Symposium & Seminario (happening this week—get tickets here!), a group of five leaders from El Sistema Venezuela joined the gathering to present a pre-recorded video that may be useful and informative for many programs.

The first service-learning course I taught at the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) Academy for the Performing Arts (APA) was a Residency in Community Arts. I chose to partner with the Consortium of Disabilities Organization (CODO) to offer my students a mentored residency working with students with disabilities. As I don’t have a background in special education, I decided to collaborate with a colleague from the University of the West Indies, music therapist Jean Raabe, to run an intensive workshop before the semester and join me in mentoring students on the project.

During the fall of 2020, I participated in the Chicago Metamorphosis Orchestra Project’s (ChiMOP) new Alumni Internship Program (CAIP). CAIP was designed to offer recent ChiMOP graduates hands-on leadership experience during program hours as well as introductory-level job experience behind the scenes—helping staff with everything from lesson planning to administrative tasks. I signed up to gain experience, having never done anything like it before (unless you count trying to teach small groups of little ones while still a student myself). At first, it was a difficult adjustment. I worried that it would be a lot of work that didn’t come naturally to me. But despite some early struggles, I had a good time doing it—especially sharing the experience with the other interns.

If I were King of Arts Education, I’d post an edict banning five words: amazing, fantastic, unbelievable, outstanding, incredible.

Most music educators use those words a lot, and always with good intent. They want to encourage, celebrate, and motivate their students. The words express the enthusiasm and affection they feel for their students. The King supports all of that. The edict has its eye on the cost of that impulse when it results in hyperbolic acclaim. Cumulatively, the cost is high.

During this time of profound disruption, music for social change organizations have the opportunity to explore new possibilities for collaboration with professional orchestras. This is easier for some than others; not every city has both an orchestra and a social change program. The Pittsburgh Symphony, for example, does not have an El Sistema program in the city—but through their Learning and Community Engagement Department, they have collaborated with many local youth programs.

The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation want to support Latinx artists and arts organizations across the United States and Puerto Rico that have been negatively impacted by COVID-19. Their Actos de Confianza relief grants provide emergency funds to these organizations, one geographical region at a time. The first calls are for programs in mid-America, moving then to the East and West Coasts. The funding cycle will take place between January and May 2021. If your organization qualifies, be sure to review the application information on their website. In addition to listing all relevant deadlines, it includes information on which states qualify for which regions.