Advocacy & Collaboration Monthly Blog: An Advocacy “Activity”

If you caught the last two month’s A&C blogs, you know over the last year that your Advocacy & Collaboration Standing Committee has been curating the most incredible A&C focus issue heading your way this fall (October to be specific)! To get everyone excited and ready for the new content coming, we’ve been highlighting some of the incredible articles from our first focus issue back in 2019. This month we are going in a slightly different direction…

Real question – do you read the “pre-pages” of the journal? You know, the pages with all the “from the…” letters, like from the “executive director,” “president,” and “editor.” Buried in those pages is the ACDA Advocacy Statement (although you can also find it on our website: adca.org/advocacy). The purpose of this month’s blog post is to get you thinking and creatively using that statement in your day-to-day advocacy.

In our focus issue this fall, we break the content down into three sections, addressing the big elephant in the room – burnout – and then how to use advocacy and collaboration to ignite or continue to energize your choral adventures. One of the tools you need it the ability to cater what you find valuable and impactful about choir world to the person you are sharing with. You may share values – like if you’re talking to a room full of ACDA friends – and you may not – like when you’re talking to that administrator who keeps on messing with your schedule…

I find that when I’m trying to connect with someone’s values of “why choir” that may be a little different than mine, a re-read of this advocacy statement helps me start to generate ideas and potentially find common ground, or another direction from which to approach and connect. Let’s try it…

1. Think of someone in your circle (another teacher, a parent, an administrator, someone in leadership, a community member, even a singer)
2. What do they value about choir? Is it the same as you or do you need to meet them on a different level and start telling stories they can connect and engage with to see the value in a way that would mean something to them?
3. Review the advocacy statement below and see what additional ideas spark!
4. What would you add to this statement in order to capture the value of the person you were thinking of in item one?

ACDA Advocacy Statement

The human spirit is elevated to a broader understanding of itself and its place in the world through the study of and participation in choral music. Singing in a choir produces more active and involved citizens. It affects self-worth in youth and adults.  It builds connectivity throughout communities.  Society benefits from the aesthetic beauty and community of singers created by choral programs within schools, houses of worship, and community organizations through involved citizenry, connectivity throughout communities, and feelings of personal self-worth.

I have this statement saved in my notepad on my phone – it is one of the tiny reasons we pay our membership dues, friends! That, and so much more, even the “from the…” letters, you should read those too 🙂

Questions? Need support or help with anything Advocacy or Collaboration? Your A&C Committee is here for you anytime. Shoot us an email , find us on facebook or instagram and shoot us a DM, or explore our resources at ACDA.org/Advocacy.