Why teaching creativity and the arts are important RIGHT NOW. Easy listening for popsters:

video - Sir Ken Robinson, “Schools Kill Creativity” at TED: http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/69
(this video’s all the rage, gone viral)

audio - Daniel Pink, “Arts Education is an Urgency”:
http://www.artsusa.org/information_services/video_audio/default.asp#pink
(similar arguments this side of the pond, without reading his book. thanks to Jean at FMC, http://www.futureofmusic.org for frwd’g this)

more to come…—–

driving to Sacramento this morning for a day of meetings with arts agencies and school district administrators, higher ed folks and state legislators. let’s see if we can make some headway with MusicianCorps in Cali…

http://www.artsed411.org
http://www.ccsesa.org/index/hotTopics.cfm?hotTopicId=1872668999

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~—–

Check out MusicianCorps supporter and friend Louise Packard’s inspiring gig in Boston, Ma: http://trinityinspires.org. Louise just had a successful event honoring Boston’s Youth where young artists performed hip-hop and spoken word: http://www.peacelabs.org/files/BostoniansForYouthPix.pdf—–;

You gotta check out the video of 2008 Goldman prize winner, Mozambique’s Feliciano dos Santos: http://www.goldmanprize.org/2008/africa.

The Music National Service initiative and MusicianCorps is focused first on bringing quality music education to our own nation’s, low income, public school children. But we definitely need a global music strategy. Not a commercial one, but one that supports work like Feliciano’s, a “musical Peace Corps.” Yeah? Let’s do it!—–