Online Art Keeps Bosnia's Isolated Seniors Connected in Pandemic

A neuropsychologist and opera singer teamed up to create a form of vocal training for people on the autism spectrum.

Little Kids Rock has helped to revitalize and broaden music education in more than a thousand schools by encouraging children to learn to play popular music, form bands and compose their own songs. Despite a backlash from traditionalists, teaching children to play music they love doesn’t “dumb down” music education—it enriches it.

As popular music has become digital and immaterial in the twenty-first century, record stores are hard to find and those in business struggle to be commercially viable. Used Kids record store in Columbus, OH has been in business for thirty years and is perhaps even more popular now that it was ten years ago. The current management treat the medium of vinyl not as a museum artifact, but rather as a commodity in demand by selling online, holding private events with collectors, and selling the materiality to young people.

The Live6 area is home to a robust cultural and creative community. And with an increase in development, there's opportunity for artists and institutions to tap into that energy to spur growth.

"Songs in the Key of Free" is a program in a Pennsylvania prison brings together inmates to play music and write songs that they perform inside, while professional musicians also play the songs in venues outside prison. The program is just a year old and is based on a successful theater program in California that cut recidivism rates and helped decrease prison infractions. The founders of "Songs in the Key of Free" are creating an album of the work, but after that, future funding is unclear.

In order to address dynamics that may keep a child from talking about traumatic experiences, a Mexico City-based child psychologist developed Antennas. Antennas is an animated character controlled and voiced by the psychologist who, as an alien, can ask basic questions about people and relationships. This approach has been effective for psychologists and use of Antennas has spread to the judicial system as well.

For the first time, high-profile Grammy attendees this year received an all-day security briefing on how to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks. In light of recent mass shootings and bombs at concerts in Manchester, Las Vegas, and Paris, the musicians met directly with U.S. State Department and European Union officials to learn best practices to help protect themselves, their crews, and their fans.

Equal Voice Network looked at low voter turnout rates in El Paso and decided that just registering voters wasn’t enough. The coalition developed a creative way to increase education and engagement in local issues: a game. Votería is a play off of Lotería, a traditional Mexican pastime similar to bingo, with updated images and text explaining key current issues and political figures.

The project No estamos todas (“We are not all here”) was founded to call attention to rising rate of female homicide victims in Mexico as well as to commemorate victim’s lives. Artists are commissioned to make a woman’s portrait—often incorporating aspects of their lives—and these portraits are shared on the project’s Instagram account. Since November of 2017, over 80 portraits have been made and shared.

Why do schools teach music in a way that turns off so many young people rather than igniting their imagination? A program that taps into students’ passion for pop and rock is revitalizing music education in many schools.