Community Outreach
Caring for the Caregiver
In September 2005 a team of creative arts therapists was assembled and designed a template for therapeutic presence in a temporary shelter in Philadelphia providing services to displaced residents of the Gulf Coast of the United States. The team used their modalities to create community and provide support to the people who were living there. Community music circles were advertised, intentionally not labeled as music therapy and open to all residents of all ages. The simple act of joining people in their temporary home, listening to their stories and offering them a place to take in or leave the music helped to make it more like the community from which they came than a homeless shelter. The project culminated in a one day workshop sponsored by the MAR titled Caring for the Caregiver, Using Music, Art and Dance to Bridge Community in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This workshop united personal and professional caregivers in an arts-based day of healing and learning about trauma and resilience and was attended by arts therapy professionals, students, volunteers who had worked in the shelter and a resident of the shelter.
Hear Our Voices
‘Hear our Voices’, an innovative music therapy project aimed at promoting healthy attitudes and behaviors in at-risk youth through the use of a 14-week structured songwriting program, is supported by a $3000 grant from MAR. Music therapists are running this after-school program at the Hancock St. John (H & S) Learning Center, located in the Kensington South area in Philadelphia. The songwriting program uses a theme-centered approach aimed at providing
the children with a creative outlet for exploration and expression of issues relevant to their lives (violence, gangsterism, family situation, drug use, anger management, school, and peer pressure) and opportunity to collaboratively create strategies for personal safety and success. At the end of the first 14-week cycle, a CD with the children songs was made and a CD release party was held at the H&S Learning Center. This exciting event was extensively covered by television and print media.
Virginia Tech
The Music Therapy Program was called upon to bring the experience of a campus-wide drum circle to our academic community. After the shootings of April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech, Radford University was looking for ways to honor and support our friends and neighbors who had lost so much. Additionally, the need to be present with our own experience of these events was essential. As the campus gathered for a candlelight vigil, students, faculty, and staff had the opportunity to feel the power and connection of community through the experience of drumming.
Upon returning for the fall semester 2007, the Music Therapy Program again was asked to provide a campus drum circle experience. This time, in anticipation of our need to‘re-group’, Again, members of the campus community came together with a focus on “Community, Resilience, and Empowerment.”
Ramallah, Palestine
This past July, Anne Lipe, Ph.D., MT-BC assisted with the leadership of a summer camp for Christian and Muslim children 9-11 years old at the Lutheran School of Hope in Ramallah, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The goals of the two-week "Living Nonviolence" camp were to create awareness of and grow a culture of nonviolence, and to foster team building and leadership skills. Therapeutic music activities were designed to support the camp's goals, and included expression of feelings, development of listening skills, promotion of self-awareness and cooperation and the encouragement of creative expression. School teachers and administrators were very enthusiastic about the camp's results, and invited the sponsoring group, "Love Thy Neighbor" back next summer to expand the camp offerings to 3 other schools.