Program:
Kid Pan Alley Songwriting Residencies
- Budget:
-
$8,000
- Category:
-
Arts, Culture & Humanities, General/Other
- Population Served:
-
Children Only (5 - 14 years)
-
Aging/Elderly/Senior Citizens
Program Description:
In a typical Kid Pan Alley residency, two professional songwriters work with 180-225 elementary school children to write 8-9 original songs over five days. In the first two days, four or five class groups of 20-25 children work with the songwriters for 45 minutes each day to compose a song, then different classes repeat that process on the third and fourth days.
The songwriting process goes something like this:
The lead songwriter asks the kids what they want to write about.
They come up with some ideas, vote to select one, and then brainstorm about that idea.
As the collection of thoughts and ideas takes shape on the blackboard and the songwriter senses there is enough material for a song, they start writing the lyric for verse or chorus.
As with the lyric, the children come up with a melodic idea to use as the basis for the song.
By the end of the first session, the whole class joins in singing and recording the song.
The second day, they complete the verses, practice, and record their completed song for rehearsal through the week.
Residencies generally conclude with two performances at the end of the week of the songs written by the students – one for their school, and an evening performance for families and the community. These typically reach an additional 800 people per school. Each residency is thoroughly documented with photos, a concert program containing all song lyrics, a CD of the classroom recordings and concert, as well as website postings of some of these materials.
All of Kid Pan Alley's programs are a variation on this core format. The Music of Art includes a visit to a museum and generally a concert at the museum, while Across the Ages brings elders into the classroom to talk with the children. The orchestral partnership program, Strike Up the Band, brings the kids on stage to sing accompanied by an orchestra that has arranged their songs for full orchestra.
Program Long-Term Success:
The goal of every Kid Pan Alley residency is to help children realize the power of their own imaginations, and to show them how to express their thoughts in song. Our overarching goal is to reinvigorate creativity as a core value in elementary education. In each Kid Pan Alley songwriting residency, two professional Kid Pan Alley songwriters guide kids through the process of writing a song: brainstorming ideas for a theme, collaborating on lyrics and melody, and learning rhythm, rhyme, and song structure. Residencies generally conclude with a rehearsal and two performances of the nine songs written by the students-- one during the day for the students and faculty, and a free evening performance for families and the community. Both performances typically reach an additional 800 people per school. Each residency is thoroughly documented with photos, a concert program, a mastered CD of the classroom recordings and concert, and postings of some of these materials on Kid Pan Alley's website, www.kidpanalley.org, and KPA's Facebook page.
Program Short-Term Success:
Teachers’ evaluations and first-hand experience have shown that the Kid Pan Alley songwriting residency process also:
promotes self-awareness and self-confidence by attaching value to the students’ creative impulses;
enables children to deal with crisis situations by helping them articulate their feelings, express their grief, and document what has happened within their community through song;
provides positive experiences in diversity, teamwork, and collaboration by supporting creativity as a prime skill to all critical thinking and problem-solving;
creates awareness among the children of social issues such as the environment and world peace by writing a series of songs on these subjects.
creates new models for musicians and songwriters to use within their own community;
promotes community awareness of the arts as essential elements of instruction in the lives of children and fosters collaboration between students, teachers, administrators, artists, and the community in the creative process.
Program Success Monitored by:
Teachers collaborating with Kid Pan Alley during a songwriting residency are asked to complete post-workshop evaluation forms designed to assess the impact of the experience on student participation, performance, self-esteem, and classroom relations. These evaluations are reviewed by staff, along with the informal feedback received from teachers, parents, and students, to modify and improve future songwriting workshops.
Program Success Examples:
Past Kid Pan Alley programs have led to more than 2,000 original songs written by 30,000+ children in thirteen states; three nationally-distributed CDs recorded by major artists: Tidal Wave of Song; Kid Pan Alley: Nashville, winner of a 2005 Parent’s Choice Gold Award and nominated for a Grammy, and I Used to Know the Names of All the Stars, a collaboration with Charlottesville area musicians awarded the WAMMIE as Best Children’s Music Recording by the Washington Area Music Association and Parents' Choice Silver Honor; working partnerships with major recording artists and groups such as the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, the Lynchburg Symphony, and the Charlottesville High School Orchestra, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Piedmont Environmental Council, the Virginia Film Festival, the Lynchburg Academy of Fine Arts, Jefferson Area Board for Aging, Music Resource Center, Piedmont Council of the Arts, the Santa Barbara Bowl, and others; consistently positive teacher assessments of Kid Pan Alley workshops’ impact on children’s participation and achievement in the classroom. Many teachers are using Kid Pan Alley study guides and web site resources to advance writing skills, values education, and collaborative learning; renewed family and community support for arts education.
Program:
Across the Ages
- Budget:
-
$8,000
- Category:
-
Arts, Culture & Humanities, General/Other
- Population Served:
-
Children Only (5 - 14 years)
-
Aging/Elderly/Senior Citizens
Program Description:
Kid Pan Alley leads intergenerational residencies that bring elementary students together with seniors from a nearby retirement community or senior center to share stories about their lives. KPA’s two professional songwriters then work separately with the students and seniors in 2-3 songwriting sessions to create songs based on some of the topics the two generations shared during their meetings. At the end of the residency, the seniors join the students in performing the songs at an assembly for the school and an evening concert for their community. Intergenerational songwriting residencies have proven to be a richly rewarding experience for all generations, and an opportunity for the seniors and children to explore their cultural differences.
Program Long-Term Success:
Increased opportunities for children and older adults to understand each other's worlds.
Program Short-Term Success:
7 original songs written and performed by children
1 song written and performed by seniors
Program Success Monitored by:
See songwriting residencies explanation.
Program Success Examples:
During Kid Pan Alley's first year of doing intergenerational residencies, 250 children shared stories with 100 seniors, and they wrote 22 original songs based on those stories.
Program:
Kid Pan Alley Character Development Assemblies
- Budget:
-
$750
- Category:
-
Arts, Culture & Humanities, General/Other
- Population Served:
-
Children Only (5 - 14 years)
Program Description:
Stand Up and Be Heard – One Little Song Can Change the World, is a Kid Pan Alley character development assembly program featuring songs written by children from previous Kid Pan Alley residencies across the country. The assembly is a 45 minute interactive concert focusing on respect – respect for each other, the community, the environment and oneself, and encourages children to explore who they are and what they want to see in their world. Performed by Kid Pan Alley songwriting instructor, Paddy Dougherty, the concert includes an opportunity for one class to write and perform a new verse to one of the songs.
Program Long-Term Success:
To teach children respect for themselves and others.
Program Short-Term Success:
Children participating in Kid Pan Alley assemblies hear songs about respect written by kids in previous Kid Pan Alley residencies across the country, learn that they can be kind to one another and themselves, and experience a surprisingly sophisticated world-view as seen through the eyes of children.
Program Success Monitored by:
Audience reaction to our character development assemblies is overwhelmingly positive, particularly when the children get to sing along with the songs being performed.
Program Success Examples:
Program:
Strike Up the Band!
- Budget:
-
$10,000
- Category:
-
Arts, Culture & Humanities, General/Other
- Population Served:
-
Children Only (5 - 14 years)
-
General Public/Unspecified
Program Description:
Kid Pan Alley's bring symphony musicians into schools to arrange and record some of the songs written by the children. We then arrange the songs for full orchestra and perform them together with other Kid Pan Alley orchestral arrangements. Elementary students also have written songs to accompany silent films and performed them during screenings at film festivals in Virginia and Texas.
Program Long-Term Success:
Increased appreciation by new audiences of orchestral music
Program Short-Term Success:
Program Success Monitored by:
Program Success Examples:
Kid Pan Alley Nashville album, done in partnership with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, was nominated for a Grammy award, and received a Parents' Choice Gold Award, as well as NAPPA and ASCAP awards.
Program:
The Music of Art
- Budget:
-
$8,000
- Category:
-
- Population Served:
-
Program Description:
This program brings children into a museum to experience abstract art, which they then use as inspiration for writing songs. The children take this one step further, creating paintings that are inspired by the songs they've written. This program is art inspiring song....inspiring art.
Program Long-Term Success:
Program Short-Term Success:
Program Success Monitored by:
Program Success Examples: