Program Design

Action research is widely used in professional research, but unlike most academic research methodology, action research doesn’t stand back and wait for non-practitioners to deliver findings. Action research is led by the people inside the work, with ongoing hypotheses, experiments, and discoveries leading to improved practice along the way.

Programs in the Sistema Europe (SE) network have a new opportunity for professional development. The European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) has invited programs in the SE network to participate in the EUYO’s free online learning program, EUYO Frontrunners.

The Peabody Institute has published an open educational resource for early-career artists who want to develop their craft and then find funding for it: The Path to Funding: The Artist’s Guide to Building Your Audience, Generating Income, and Realizing Career Sustainability.

Through a lot of note-taking, conversation, and, eventually, a vote, we settled on two questions that would guide our week of collaborative inquiry: “How can we improve the transmission of emotional message through music?” and “How can we provide musical opportunities for students who may not otherwise have them?”

In the Shonai district, an inner-city commercial area in the southern part of the city, population is half what it was in 1970; as families with small children moved out of the area, the number of children has decreased. A survey conducted by the Toyonaka City Council (TCC) showed that only about 40 percent of the younger generation (ages 18–39) in the Shonai area say they want to keep living in their community, while among all city residents in general, that number is 60 percent.

The celebration and cheer were well warranted. But the deeper and more challenging effort of this project has been one of bridging—bridging our organizational values with the structures of fundraising and the construction industry.

In the plan, these Pillars come to life through the students, who personalize the articulation concept in order to motivate their skill-building and artistic performance.

Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has funded a groundbreaking multi-year project that explores how music and storytelling can support the wellbeing of migrant and refugee children.

When a dedicated youth music organization starts brainstorming, the sky opens with possibilities. Such was the lead-up to the creation of KidComposers, a natural extension of OrKidstra’s online Improv Explorers program.

In 2020, amid a global pandemic and an extended and overdue reckoning with systemic racism in America, the Black Teaching Artist Lab was born. Founder Melissa Parke had been thinking about the idea since 2019, and she launched the organization at a time when many teaching artists were interrogating their own practices for the first time.