Meeting Mentors
Session Objective: to prepare submissions for our community music video celebrating the power of art and nature
Raise Your Voice Labs applies methods of musical peacebuilding, facilitated dialogue, and circle singing to help groups find their common ground, share concerns, and voice their collective identity. Echoing a major tenet in environmental justice, the process is as important as the product: being heard and actively engaging in decision-making is crucial to community empowerment and just outcomes.
The “Climates of Resistance: Raise Your Voice” project brings incredible scholar-artists together to work with our class around themes of anti-racism and environmental justice. They will be guiding us in the co-creation of a music video celebrating our course community and highlighting diverse perspectives. During class on 27 October, we enjoyed some live musical performances and had a conversation about our own experiences with and priorities in environmental racism. This week, you’ll have the chance to meet individually with one of the artist mentors to create your contribution to the video...whether that’s singing, dancing, recording birdsong, designing and holding up a protest sign, or something else entirely!
Listen: to the initial backing track, created based on our class workshop on 27 October.
To the Seventh Generation - Initial Backing Track.mp3Chorus:
How we are with our environment
Will be our way with one another
The voices crying out
Come from our sisters and our brothers
And if we hear, will we listen
To the trees and seas aglisten
To the calls of liberation
To the Seventh Generation
Brainstorm: your contribution! You can share anything that is textual, visual and/or sonic, and it will be edited into the music video. Examples of what you could do:
sing: follow the Raise Your Voice Labs’ guidelines to sing along with the backing track
play: any instrument you like...you can add to the melody lines, create a harmony, improv something, or anything else you want to layer on
write: additional lyrics – which you can sing yourself, with any melody or rhythm that makes sense with the backing track, or email lyrics to climatesofresistance@gmail.com, and the professional musicians can make your words come alive
draw: a protest sign, and film yourself holding it up
paint: an underrepresented stakeholder, image of nature, or anything you want to express visually – you can send a photo of the final product, or a video of you as you paint
dance: share some physical movement: you can interpret the main lyrics through dance, or add a message of your own
sign: film yourself sharing an environmental message in sign language
translate: we would love to hear additional languages! Translate the main lyrics or add your own.
capture: some sounds of nature on your daily walk: birdsong, a river, leaves rustling, mosquitoes buzzing...anything you think we should take time to listen to!
share: anything else you would like, in any format: we want as many kinds of ‘voices’ as we can get!
Raise Your Voice Labs - Home Recording Guidelines 2021.pdfHow is this connected to the Agency Artwork assignment?
Good question! The answer is...however you want it to be. 😊
Option 1 - Be a Main Songwriter: If you are excited to write lyrics, create something sonic, etc., then the contribution you make to the song can be your Agency Artwork. You simply need to write up your Artist Statement to explain which part(s) of the music is yours and how your creation fits the assignment themes.
Option 2 - Share Your Artwork: If you create a piece of visual art, dance, etc. for your Agency Artwork and think it could fit well in the video, you can share it with us - the video editors will use it in some way in the final music video.
Option 3 - Do Something New: If you are doing something for your Agency Artwork that totally doesn’t make sense with the video (or that you would prefer to not be in the video), you can do something else to participate. (This could involve singing the chorus, playing a quick bit of music, making a different piece of art, etc.) If it is a substantial/relevant contribution, Becca will award you some extra credit for the double-action.
Option 4 - Don’t Participate: Our community music video will be made public. You are not required to contribute anything for your grade - Becca would never force you to share something publicly you aren’t happy to. But we hope you’ll want to, because we want to show you off! If you don’t want to participate in the music video, you do still need to meet with a mentor as your class time for this week. You can use that time to ask them more about their work, brainstorm for your private Agency Artwork, etc.
As a reminder, below is the Assignment Brief for your Agency Artwork, which is worth 25% of your final grade.
NAT_GEO300 - Assignment Brief - Agency Artwork.pdfListen: to the way Lindsay Adams shares her voice visually through this piece from her “Quarantine Chronicles” series.
Visual Artist Lindsay Adams studied International Studies: World Politics and Diplomacy and Spanish, while minoring in Studio Art at The University of Richmond, before working as a Marketing Consultant. Her passion for communication and sharing experiences has transcended through both her visual and written expression. Living with Cerebral Palsy, she works as a disability advocate to educate others about the needs and experiences of the disability community and promotes equity and representation across different spaces.
As a Black woman, her deep understanding of the human experience, and the depths of intersectionality is showcased throughout her art, combining figures, lines, colour, and abstraction. Adams is committed to furthering and embracing her artistic journey and career, and is constantly seeking new ways to translate life experiences through art. She embraces her struggles, differences, and vulnerabilities and seeks to translate these expressions across her work.
