Music Moves: Arts & Community Wellness Continues to Move and Grow

Old Town School of Folk Music has a history of not only providing education but engaging people from all walks of life in an inclusive, creative community. So, it’s fitting that as we reach 60 years, the School continues to grow its newest major outreach effort, Music Moves: Arts & Community Wellness Initiative, currently in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood.

Music Moves is an arts education program, an economic development initiative, a broad community partnership, a job creator, and a national model for the restorative power of music. It’s demonstrating how arts participation can be a transformative catalyst for personal and community empowerment.

The Initiative has been piloted for a year at I Grow Chicago and current local partners include: Imagine Englewood If, Ogden Park, Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), Live the Spirit/AACM, Lindblom High School and UIC. The School is also hosting classes at Phenom’s MC School, LYRIC (Let Your Rhythm Inspire Creativity), Teen Living Programs and Youth Coalition Against Violence (thru the arts).

Through Music Moves, Old Town School is bringing together exceptional local teaching artists, offering music instruction infused with careful attention to students’ complex social realities; and producing public performances offering students the deep validation that makes music such a powerful motivator. As the program grows, Music Moves will be hiring the most engaged students as “arts activators,” who receive a good wage to assist teachers, prepare gigs and recruit the next class of students, eventually becoming the next generation of teaching artists.

After one year, the School has expanded the Music Moves initiative from two teachers to five, and one dozen students to an expected 200 by year end. Looking into 2018, several key developments for Music Moves include:

• Saxophonist and composer Ernest Dawkins as well as bassist/percussionist Dr. Rahul Sharma of the multiethnic band Funkadesi are engaging young musicians from south and west side schools, churches, and choirs along with students from the Music Moves classes to perform an original piece, “Quantum Englewood”, at the 2018 Englewood Jazz Festival. Approximately 600 students are projected to participate.
• Expanded programming at Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center for teens.
• A second programming location for the Teen Living Program.
• Beginning Music Moves programming at BUILD Chicago in the Austin community.
• Re-starting the Male Drumming Mentoring Program and the MANifest Curriculum with Dr. Obari Cartman at the Quarry Center in South Shore

Old Town School looks forward to sharing more details as Music Moves continues to expand into 2018 and beyond.

Old Town School of Folk Music extends a special thanks to the following supporters of Music Moves: Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, The 2017 Chicago Fund for Safe and Peaceful Communities, The Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust, The Field Foundation, Lauren and David Grossman, The Joyce Foundation, Kenneth and Barbara Kaufman, and Don McLellan and Martina Keller. National sponsors include: Ludwig, Remo, Fender, the Kennedy Center, and UCLA’s Arts and Health Initiative