Partnership with Dwelling Place
Two Summers’ Tales
Last year, In the heat of a summer’s night I was surrounded by smiling faces and drumming hands. It was a planned program for the community of Heartside Park. The entire time I had the drums out in the park, the community played together.
One thing was apparent even before we were packing up: We need to do this again.
I heard that from the community members who came to play with us, from my volunteers who were with me as a teaching artist for Artists Creating Together, and from the organizer, Brian from Dwelling Place.
These community events are what I love to do. I’ve worked with Jenn Schaub of Dwelling Place many times in the past and she has always been intentional with the focus and delivery of service to her community. I was thrilled to see that Brian was as well.
We talked and planned a series of similar events for this Summer and kept in touch over the Winter.
Then, this Spring became an endless conversation with my community partners about cancellations and postponements . I expected the conversation with Dwelling Place to go the same way.
Instead, in a pivotal call, we spoke for a while about re-imagining the concept. We could serve their community with the same focus on togetherness through music and use newly developed online skills to deliver fun and engaging musical experiences .
Like a lot of us, I had spent the spring relearning how to deliver experiences I’d developed over years of practice. Now, it would be through a tiny screen to faces we can barely see and voices we can’t always hear. I learned that I needed better mics, cameras, lighting and editing to connect with people in a meaningful way. I am still learning how to use this great technology to make music with my community.
The other lesson I learned is that if I’m not putting physical materials in people’s hands, I’m not doing everything I can to make music with them. It’s important to know that we can make music with anything, but instruments help us be more musically expressive.
I brought up the idea of delivering instruments to all the of the participants, willing to refurbish used drums to make it happen.
Understanding the value for their community, Brian and Jenn instead suggested we purchase new drums. We found bongos to be our best bet for giving new students quality instruments that they could keep and continue to make music with even after the program.
This amazing class starts this week with 19 participating students. I’m so excited to have partners with the ability to pivot in the face of unprecedented social changes and the vision to provide both physical materials and technological services to their community.