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Tracking SEL Growth in Students with the Light My Music Fire Workshops

Christina Placilla, Director of Education, The Harmony Program, and Dan Trahey, Founder and Creative Director, The Collective Conservatory; Creator and Director, Tuned In, The Peabody Institute at the Johns Hopkins University; and Artistic Liaison, OrchKids, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

06-01-2021

Earlier this year, Dan Trahey and Pete Tashjian of The Collective Conservatory were invited by the Harmony Program to facilitate an eight-week Saturday-morning creativity workshop with students from multiple Harmony Program sites across New York City. The partnership was a natural fit. The Collective Conservatory’s work is rooted in creating environments that allow for personal expression, group problem-solving, self-esteem building through promoting individual assets, self-awareness, and increased musical skill sets. The Harmony Program, which provides after-school music education programs in underserved NYC communities, has long prioritized the development of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) skills. As a natural extension of The Collective Conservatory’s programming, the workshop emphasized SEL to create a framework and pathway to concretely study creativity.

 

A Tale of Two Cities: Istanbul and Leipzig

Hazal Kol, Programme Coordinator of Barış İçin Müzik Foundation

05-05-2021

It may not seem geographically possible, but there is an invisible bridge between Istanbul and Leipzig: the bridge that connects the children of Barış İçin Müzik (Music for Peace) and the children of Kinderchor der Oper Leipzig (Children’s Choir of Oper Leipzig). Their friendship dates back to 2014, when Oper Leipzig, with the support of Turkey’s ENKA Foundation, came to Istanbul and visited the youth orchestra program Barış İçin Müzik. This visit led to two joint camp experiences, one in Leipzig (2016) and one in Istanbul (2020), with the total participation of over 150 children. The message created by the children was strong and clear: Peace.

Orchestras of the Venezuelan Diaspora

The Ensemble Editors

05-05-2021

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are 5.4 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants worldwide—one of the largest displacement crises in the world. Many among these are former students, teachers, and leaders of El Sistema, Venezuela’s national youth orchestra program, founded by Maestro José Antonio Abreu in 1975; this growing diaspora has been shaping and enriching cultures in host countries. Displaced Venezuelans continue to make beautiful music, and not just as teachers and solo performers. Across the world, Venezuelan-founded orchestras continue to pop up, no less technically brilliant than those that made El Sistema a globally adapted model. One article in the magazine Guataca, which promotes Venezuelan music and musical initiatives around the world, reminds us of that continuing legacy.

Global Teaching Artistry Models: Ideas for Reflection

Nancy J. Uscher, Ph.D., Dean, College of Fine Arts and Professor of Music, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

05-05-2021

Artists’ careers will likely undergo considerable transformation over the next decades, as those trained in arts disciplines increasingly invent their own pathways for the future. As the arts expand their mission to include delivering social impact, not only will artists flourish in new contexts, but also, society may well be repositioned to build richer perspectives around the value of the arts and artists in the world.

Midcasting* Toward Just Futures: Creative Youth Development’s Waymaking to Systems Change through and beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic

Arielle Julia Brown on behalf of The Lewis Prize for Music Knowledge Generation Team

05-04-2021

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, creative youth development (CYD) organizations have been expanding their work to provide greater support to students, families, and communities impacted by the pandemic. To strengthen this response from the field, The Lewis Prize for Music offered a COVID-19 Response grant to 32 organizations of varying size and geographic locations. Totaling 1.25 million dollars, the fund supported organizations that were leading direct response efforts in their communities. These efforts offered mental health support, food access, housing security, civic engagement support, and academic support, among other things, alongside digital adaptation of regular program activities. Additionally, many CYD organizations supported youth engagement in various forms of movement-building, including, but not limited to, the Black Lives Matter movement and work against voter suppression.

Rebuilding Your Program? You May Need Different Tools

Ben Gudbrandson, Artistic Director, Kalamazoo Kids In Tune, in collaboration with Donielle Hetrick, Afterschool Program Manager, Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra

05-04-2021

My Papa grew up on the oil fields of Northern Michigan in the 1940s. He learned quickly the importance of working smarter, not harder; when anybody was faced with a challenge he would say, “Get a bigger hammer, son.” For a long time, I didn’t understand what it meant. But this year, the Kalamazoo Kids In Tune staff and I have leaned into this idea more than ever.

Instilling Cultural Pride and Self-Belief in Cape Town’s Youth

Thomas Duncan, Programs Manager, Playing For Change Foundation

04-07-2021

Predominately Black townships surrounding Cape Town, South Africa are still recovering and rebuilding after the devastating effects of Apartheid. Segregated communities, limited economic opportunities, and poor educational resources compound each other and block youth from determining their own futures. It was in this context that Playing For Change Foundation (PFCF) established its first music program at a secondary school in the township of Gugulethu, which comprises a mainly Black population in the Western Cape district, in 2010. Six years later, we officially established the Imvula Music Program, operating free of charge at different elementary and secondary schools across the Gugulethu, Philippi, and Nyanga townships outside of Cape Town.

Sparking Curiosity and Innovation through Community Outreach

Linda McAlister, Executive Director, Schmidt Vocal Arts; Global Leaders Program alumna

04-07-2021

Economist John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” Often, in new program development, cultural innovators must look past ideas that become too comfortable and too safe in order to create a “wow” idea. In working with the Global Leaders’ Program (GLP) 2021 cohort, our group of changemakers has been challenged to push through old stereotypes and ideas to pioneer new ways of thinking. Through these creative pathways, arts organizations will be able to curate and implement thoughtful programming for their communities.

School Youth Orchestras in Rio de Janeiro: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Development

Moana Martins, Cofounder, Orquestras nas Escolas

04-07-2021

Morro da Providência, a vast hillside favela (slum) in Rio de Janeiro, is the oldest favela in Brazil. In 2011, over a hundred years after it was first occupied by unpaid war veterans and freed slaves, a group of local residents passionate about social change launched the Cultural Association Amigos da Providência. During the past decade, that association has developed into the Brazilian Institute of Music and Education (IBME), which pursues artistic, educational, and professional training projects for children, adolescents, and young people in the public school system.

Bosnia’s House of Good Tones: Expanding the Scope of a Music Program

Tricia Tunstall in conversation with Ismar Porić, Founder/Director of House of Good Tones Srebrenica

04-07-2021

Have you or your colleagues ever thought about responding to pandemic hardships and political tensions by building a multi-media center? The Sistema-inspired House of Good Tones (HOGT) in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina not only thought about that, but did it—and it’s a less improbable response than you might think.

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