Raise Your Voice: January Shivers

This is the seventh post in a series: https://choralnet.org/archives/665964

Happy New Year! I hope everyone was able to get some rest after the holiday concert season and enjoy some time with friends and family.

Personally, I’m just regrouping after the break and continuing to work on our choral pieces for our March concert. So let’s regroup regarding our Solutionary Choral Work.

If you have not yet started your solutionary project, here’s a quick overview:

1) You’ll want to poll your choir about what they would like to work on. The idea is to choose something that they see as a big issue in the community or world, that they would like to work towards solving.
2) Vote on the topic.

Your order of the rest of events will depend on the length of time you’re working on the project. I work on it all school year with my students, so I start with research assignments before I get to prepping for that particular concert. If you’re going to be preparing for the concert at the same time, you’ll start by choosing your repertoire that goes with the theme.
Here’s my order:

3) Have students/choir members research what has already been done in this area. Then set aside some rehearsal time for them to share their discoveries. I call this “Tell Me Something Good!” and it helps bring a sense of positivity to the project, as well as prevents coming up with solutions that already exist.
4) Have choir members choose what area of the project they would like to focus on. For example, for our Ocean Conservancy project, students are mostly choosing between pollution, marine animals, overfishing, and climate change. Of course, these are all related, but that way we make sure to look at all the different angles. My students have already chosen their “specialization”, and will be working in groups in a couple of weeks to come up with what they would like to do to help in their area. It’s important for their solutions to not cause more problems to the environment, animals or people. We want to do the most good and least harm (MOGO, as coined by the Institute for Humane Education).
5) Do the thing! Have students enact their solutionary ideas. Last year, my students did an LGBTQ project. They wrote letters to their legislators, held a meeting with the principal, wrote an anonymous pronoun survey for students, and made educational posters for the school.
6) Prepare your repertoire themed to the topic and select what organization you will be donating your funds to (you may have done this earlier if you’re doing a consolidated version).
7) Advertise!
8) Offer your themed fundraiser concert, with educational components offered by your choir members between songs!

If you haven’t started yet, it’s not too late. Remember if you’re working with a public school group to make the project optional and inform parents of the topic. All of my students are still participating in this Ocean Conservancy project, and last year 92% participated in the LGBTQ project. All aspects need to be student led, because you wouldn’t want any parents thinking you’re pushing personal beliefs – and also because it empowers the students!

Happy January everyone. Good luck out there.
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