MusicAlive!
Using a direct instructional approach that connects everyday life to music, the MusicAlive program helps students improve perceptive listening, critical thinking and creative participation skills. Through practical application and integrated, standards-based content, the curriculum addresses national and state goals for social science, language arts, math and science. Participating students attend full semester, weekly sessions with teaching artists/mentors who reveal the connection between the arts and other disciplines through teaching and applying the fundamentals of music theory, cultural applications of music and music education techniques.
Program Spotlight
Hooked On Drums™ brings the upbeat, inspiring rhythms of African djembe drumming from the Malinke people in Guinea, West Africa to kids in urban Chicago. We offer Hooked On Drums classes and youth drum performances through the Chicago Park District, local schools and community organizations. The program gets kids hooked on authentic, traditional music, allowing them to explore African heritage while sharpening their minds on a complex musical idiom with irresistible rhythms. Hooked On Drums™ is deeply committed to using African music as a vehicle for fostering creativity, curiosity, discipline, self-confidence and well-being in inner-city, at-risk youth of diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Website: www.hookedondrums.org
Factsheets Outcomes Pager High school students participating in Chicago´s After School Matters program—which offers paid internships in the arts¸ technology¸ sports¸ and communications to teenagers in some of the city´s most underserved schools— have higher class attendance¸ lower course failures and higher graduation rates than similar students who do not participate in the program. (University of Chicago, Chapin Hall Center for Children, 2007)