PROGRAM & PROJECT DESIGN
SonicBloom works with social change agents to incorporate music into programs and projects tailored to local needs and goals.
You don’t need to be a musician to use music strategically. It can be as simple as selecting music that welcomes people as they enter a space or playing a song or music video to launch a dialogue on specific topic, or it can be as involved as using participatory music activities to bridge divides or build resilience.
SonicBloom offers technical support and guidance in ways to use music-based activities, including high-level strategy, project design, curriculum development, training, and coaching.
HOW MUSIC CAN ADVANCE SOCIAL CHANGE?
Music helps us relax, which makes us more likely to receive new or difficult information and learn from it.
Music cultivates creativity and new approaches to solving problems.
Because making music involves listening and using our voices together, it provides a structure within which diverse voices can flourish.
When fear is high, tolerance for risk is low and we become entrenched in separateness. Music provides a safe way to encounter “otherness” and recognize our shared humanity.
Case Studies
Cultivating Resilience Through Creativity
Mother Tongue Project
COMMUNITY MUSIC FACILITATION
SonicBloom offers facilitation of community-based music that fosters participation, inclusion, equality, and creativity for any group size.
Community music is an approach that encourages full participation in musical activities regardless of participants’ musical ability. The emphasis is on collaboration and co-creating an enjoyable experience that can reduce stress, cultivate community, and provide a safe space to interact and learn. Community music helps participants recognize their own creativity, and it fosters leadership by encouraging them to take turns leading improvised singing or sound making. Because no offer is refused is community music, it nurtures positivity and risk taking.
SonicBloom offers program design and facilitation in community music for groups of all sizes, including:
Circle singing
Drum circles
Found percussion
Collaborative songwriting
Music appreciation
Case Studies
KBC Kengtung Workshop
MUSIC-BASED EVENT PLANNING
SonicBloom offers strategy and event-planning services for music-based events such as festivals, concerts, and flash mobs.
Events where music serves as the main content often accomplish secondary goals such as community building, issue awareness, or fundraising for a cause. Bringing people together for a shared experience can create a sense of collective identity that nurtures further action and connection. And music-based events such as festivals and flash mobs can blur the boundaries between performers and audience, encouraging people to discover and cultivate their own creativity.
SonicBloom helps organizations and communities navigate the process of staging music-based events, including booking acts, procuring permits, creating an intended atmosphere, reaching specific audiences, and incorporating any desired non-music activities.
Case Studies
Columbia City BeatWalk
MONITORING & EVALUATION (M&E)
SonicBloom helps organizations evaluate their music-based programming by linking indicators to research, identifying evidence-based goals and objectives, and measuring tangible outcomes.
How do you know if a program or project is working? To answer this question, organizations have to understand the current research in a field and know what constitutes success. Evaluation frameworks help groups identify values, goals, and outcomes at the outset of a project and maintain this comprehensive perspective during the implementation phase. M&E tools also help organizations communicate their accomplishments to various audiences and advocate more effectively with donors.
SonicBloom offers development of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) indicators and logframes, mid-term and end-term evaluations, and training and support for M&E teams specifically for arts- and music-based programming.
Case Studies
Turning Tables Evaluation
Turning Tables Myanmar is a music education program that seeks to empower marginalized youth throughout the country. They offer a seven-day workshop, followed by a music festival, that gives youth a platform for expression. An evaluation was done to determine what measurements they could be using to determine whether or not their programming was achieving its goals and objectives, and also helped them look critically at their programming in order to make changes to be more effective. The evaluation also served to advocate to donors the value of music-based programming by highlighting research that relates to Turning Tables’ programming, showing the efficacy of using music for youth empowerment.
RESEARCH
SonicBloom offers research services and support to document the use of music-based tools for social change.
All over the world people are using music, both formally and informally, as an instrument for building community and connection, cultivating empathy, fostering resilience, and creating positive change. In order to understand and harness music’s full power as a strategic tool, research must document the broad range of ways it’s being used, its efficacy for various purposes, the outcomes it’s achieving, and its other possible applications.
SonicBloom offers literature reviews, development of research methodology, data collection, training in use of arts/music-based tools in participatory action research, and development of advocacy materials based on evidence-based research on the efficacy of music-based programming.
Case Studies
Arts-Based Pedagogy Research in Rakhine State
Partnering with Vicki Ware. a researcher from Deakin University in Australia, workshops on asset-based community development were facilitated using arts-based facilitation for community workers in Rakhine State. The goal was to see if arts-based facilitation helps participants with comprehension and retention of new ideas, and/or increased motivation and confidence to try new approaches in dealing with community conflict. An academic paper outlining research results to-date is currently in progress.