Center for Music National Service

By MNS Artist Entrepreneur Alaia Zeno

On Saturday April 24th, 2010, I attended Slide Ranch’s annual Spring Fling event, and was accompanied by three of the five Bay Area MusicianCorps Fellows, the Bay Area Program Director, the Bay Area Executive and Program Manager, the Bay Area Development Assistant, and MNS’s CEO and Founder. Additionally, Bay Area Fellow Laura Cambron brought a group of four diverse and musically talented elementary school students from Oakland’s Think College Now, one of the sites she serves, to attend and perform at this event. The students performed San Jarocho music to an audience of approximately 120 families and children on Slide Ranch’s beautiful, seaside grounds. Accompanied by their teacher, MC Fellow Laura, two of the children played ukeles, one played the Quijada de Burro (better known as the Donkey Jaw), and one sang in Spanish while also playing the Donkey Jaw.

This was a particularly special day for MusicianCorps not only because Laura’s students had the chance to perform alongside their teacher and other Bay Area Fellows, but as well because of the outdoor educational experiences that were made available to them and all of the event’s attendees. Slide Ranch’s annual Spring Fling event celebrates the season with live music, local organic cuisine, and farm and craft activities for everyone! This engaging, hands-on event also emphasizes local farms and food, and as such is complete with activities that explore sheep shearing, goat milking, planting seeds, and tasting of delicious local, organic foods. Attendees have the opportunity to enjoy other interactive activities designed to engage children in creative ways, including bread and cheese-making, spring crafts, nature hikes, carding and spinning wool, visits with the new baby goats and more. Slide Ranch welcomes kids and their families to immerse themselves in their spectacular coastal venue and fun educational activities in a natural setting. Parents have a chance to especially enjoy live bluegrass and acoustic jams, as well as the breathtaking coastal views at Slide Ranch’s Muir Beach location.

Check out more photos from Slide Ranch

My primary role at this exciting, interactive, and educational outdoor event was that of documentation. With my Flip Camera and a digital camera on hand, I was responsible for documenting the students’ performance and experience, the Fellows’ performance (with which Bay Area Program Director Vanessa Morrison participated), the reception given by the audience and other attendees thereafter, and the overall feel of the event. By capturing footage of this experience in video, photo, and audio formats, I was able to take full advantage of the truly magical place and event with which MusicianCorps Bay Area was invited to attend. After filming, photographing, and recording audio footage to document the day’s happenings, I then organized these multi-media files, labeled and dated them accordingly, and shared this material both internally to Fellows, VISTAs, and MNS staff in Seattle, Chicago, and New Orleans (the remaining MusicianCorps partner cities), as well as externally to our local and national supporters via the online MNS Community Network.

While this task may seem simple, MNS and MusicianCorps benefit greatly from having VISTAs lead and carry out these documentation processes. As a program, MusicianCorps benefits from this VISTA-driven documentation system because it allows Fellows from across the country, located in one of five MusicianCorps pilot cities nationwide, the chance to see, hear, discuss, share, and learn from each other. By having VISTAs document and then share out the work that Fellows are doing, MNS is able to better track the outputs MusicianCorps is generating. By diligently tracking the program’s outputs (i.e. community events hosted, bands/ensembles created, volunteers engaged, etc.) in addition to the program’s inputs (i.e. the activities Fellows are leading, the various types of communities and people they are serving, etc.), MNS can more easily and effectively report on organizational and programmatic successes, address challenges, problem-solve solutions, and create a lasting and deeply felt community impact – all of which contribute to MNS developing a strong infrastructure.

Using VISTAs to document MusicianCorps program activities and music-driven service events directly aligns with AmeriCorps*VISTA philosophies and practices – MNS uses VISTAs, working in an indirect service capacity, to track the direct service work Fellows are carrying out so as to build the infrastructure of MNS.  While having VISTAs lead documentation processes clearly benefits MusicianCorps as a program, it also benefits MNS from a development and grant-writing perspective. Because grant-writing and development work more often than not requires that a particular organization or program track, report out on, and strive to constantly improve both their quantitative and qualitative outputs, using VISTAs to document these figures and this information directly impacts MNS’s organizational development. With VISTAs in charge of documentation, MNS staff have more time to spend on other tasks, one of which is grant writing. With more staff time spent on actual grant writing, MNS is able to use the information that VISTAs document to generate and leverage more resources, elicit greater community support, and secure an increasingly diverse funding stream. And, if MNS is able to secure further funding, MusicianCorps will benefit and resultantly the high-need people and low-income communities it serves as well will benefit.
 
Additionally, by even attending this event, let alone documenting it, MNS both benefits and impacts the community because it uses MusicianCorps as a vehicle to increase music-making; draw attention to the importance of music-driven service; improve student achievement; build crucial 21st century life success skills for underserved youth through music education and performance, arts integration, and service-learning; increase the number of musicians with full-time and full-benefit employment; encourage cross-cultural understanding; foster shared learning experiences through music and service activities; and much more. As such, while in the short-term Laura’s students reaped the benefits of a wonderfully engaging outdoor learning experience when attending Slide Ranch’s Spring Fling, in the long-term, by receiving music instruction and participating in community engaging performances like this one, these students are developing the creative habits of mind that will last them a lifetime. These habits include imagining possibilities, critical thinking, exercising persistence and discipline, courage and risk-taking, and reflection. Experts in the field of arts education have found that student learning advances at a more rapid pace when these habits are practiced. Additionally, the Fellows too are benefiting from their term of service with MusicianCorps in both short-term and long-term ways. In the short-term, by being involved with MusicianCorps, Fellows are gaining full-time employment, a steady paycheck, and healthcare – something that professional musicians rarely receive. In the long-term, Fellows are receiving invaluable teaching experience and ongoing professional development, which will only add value to their already honed abilities.
 
Although it takes organizational effort and a high degree of planning to have Fellows and their students participate in community events like Slide Ranch’s Spring Fling, the benefits are innumerable, as expressed above. It is more a challenge to plan for these events than it is to participate in them. However, VISTAs have been invaluable in helping to make the necessary arrangements for and thereafter appropriately documenting MusicianCorps’ involvement in community engaging music-driven service activities, projects, or opportunities. With VISTAs leading documentation while simultaneously supporting Program Directors in organizing similar events, MusicianCorps should have few challenges to address with respect to sustainability in this manner. However, when challenges do arise, VISTAs are extremely helpful in providing suggestions for ways in which these issues may be addressed.

Overall, MusicianCorps has had great success in attending, supporting, hosting, and documenting community events and civic engagement opportunities. The positive experience that Bay Area Fellows and the youth they serve had at Slide Ranch only reaffirmed MNS’s belief in the importance of music-driven civic engagement.