SW's Season of Song 2010 10-day Challenge

This page is part of the Songwriting Works Season of Song Challenge. To see the rest of the team, click here: http://www.razoo.com/p/holiday-75-SW-Season-of-Song

What we do: Professional songwriters get together with older adults, elders, families, caregivers and all who care, and compose original music together. We co-write with participants in the lead, and pro songwriters in service. We work with frail and healthy folks and families, those most rarely heard who deserve our ears and attention and have so much to teach us! This includes hundreds of elders with dementia and their loved ones.
Then: ...Songs soon take shape, brimming full of words, melodies, rhythms, stories, images, and gestures. The rooms fill with laughter, meaningful conversation, validation, and poignant moments–as the permission to be truthful and share mutual respect guides us all.

Studying our programs, Theresa Allison MD, MMusic, a medical doctor and ethnomusicologist summed it up this way “Songwriting in the nursing home is not a mere activity—it is an opportunity for intellectual, artistic, relational and spiritual growth. As such, it fosters a real sense of neighborhood and transcends the artificiality of the institutional life.”

THIS CAMPAIGN SUPPORTS SW's TRAINING FOR PRO SONGWRITERS and will help us serve hundreds more elders and families in the year ahead.

THANK YOU!!!

How did this all start?

It started back in 1989. As a singer-songwriter looking to make music full-time, friends in social work invited me to play for folks in nursing homes. I loved the people and their stories, and having not known my grandparents I was curious what kind of project might make it possible to stay longer and truly listen instead of heading for the next paid gig. Enter Betsy Rose and Robert Rice, awesome songwriter, artist, connectors of people. Robert phoned Betsy, she recommended me, and within two days I was part of a California Arts Council team of poets, musicians, painters, and actors serving elders for the next 3 years. When our funders asked that we serve more people I was sent into a San Francisco adult day center with an assignment to write group songs. “How will I do that?,” I asked Robert. “You'll figure it out,” he said. Only years later could I look back and see that the process I discovered, now called Songwriting Works™, sprang from some of the wisest, most fun and honorable things I'd ever learned in my then 29 years: Believe in people's music, its in us all. Listen and learn. Get into a groove. Make room for stories. Create by consensus. Support the action... And so we honored each other this way and it worked. In 1997, Diane Sward Rapaport helped me come up with the Songwriting Works™ name, and the Jewish Home San Francisco became the "flagship" location for what is now (as of 2009) an independent non-profit organization. We've served 3,000+ elders and families, composed 300 songs and are thrilled that these songs have been heard around the world through CDs, concerts and Nathan Friedkin's award-winning film "A Specially Wonderful Affair." Last year, with support of the National Endowment for the Arts, SW launched its first comprehensive training for professional songwriter-facilitators and started new programs for family caregivers. Our vision is to train teams to reach families and communities near and far. This year we’re partnering with the Washington Health Foundation to create tools for music and wellness that people can use at home. We’re also excited to announce that SW will receive the 2010 Rosalinde Gilbert Innovations in Alzheimer’s Disease Caregiving Legacy Award at this year’s Aging in America conference.

And yes, I still get to write songs, give concerts and in 2011, make a new record.

To learn more or volunteer with us, visit our website: www.songwritingworks.org

THANK YOU AGAIN for your support.

Let's make this season and all of 2011 the most musical of years yet!

-- Judith-Kate