Instruments of Change arts-based community development
INSTRUMENTS OF CHANGE designs expressive arts experiences that empower people to become instruments of transformative change in their own lives as they find their creative voices.
News
Sept 2023, It is with profound joy and excitement that we share the latest 10 lullabies co-created in our Lullaby Project. This year, thanks to BC Arts Council funding, our reach has broadened beyond Vancouver, to several families in the Lower Mainland and Victoria too. These meaningful original songs range from lullabies, to traditional African anthems, to rap. Please Listen Here
July 2023, Since October 2022, Women Rock resumed in-person jam sessions at the Carnegie Centre, under the new leadership of the musicians from the band Space Queen (Seah Maister, Jenna Earle & Karli MacIntosh). Together, this community of rockin' women expressed their hopes and challenges in two original songs they've recorded here: Summer Daze & Rise Rise.
Jan 2023: Over the past couple of years, Executive Director, Laura Barron has had the opportunity to expand her Art for Social Change practice in the impactful climate action art space, as a lead mentoring artist with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick's Harm to Harmony project. You can check out the ancient forest lullaby she co-created with tree activists across Canada here.
Our Vision
Through our arts-based community development projects, which serve youth and adults in school, community centre, and prison settings, we create meaningful experiences that employ a variety of artistic modes to give both our facilitating artists and our participants opportunities to build confidence, and enhance collaboration and communication skills, while fostering cross-cultural understanding.
Our Objectives
-To bring music and art to the broadest possible demographic, allowing people the chance to experience, make and do art themselves.
-To connect and impact the creators and audience of our art by enabling participants to become agents of change in their own lives through the act of collective art making.
-To advocate for the value of the arts by illustrating their broad-reaching benefits through our projects, performances, and stories.
-To create a sustainable organization, using diversified funding strategies and by developing numerous community partnerships.
As we connect community through creativity, we gratefully acknowledge that we conduct our business from the traditional, ancestral and unceded land of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of The Xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:Lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Our Pledge
CREATE meaningful music performances,
art projects and partnerships
FACILITATE social change through collaborative art making
EDUCATE youth, audiences, artists and communities
COLLABORATE with artists, communities, and change makers
ADVOCATE for the arts, youth, and human rights
PARTICIPATE inclusively in local culture
CELEBRATE community, music, art, and Vancouver
INNOVATE sustainable funding strategies and relationship building tools
COMMUNICATE through a variety of artistic mediums
CURATE music and art for all
They were nothing more than people, by themselves…
but all together, they have become the heart and
muscles and mind of something perilous and new,
something strange and growing and great.
Together, all together, they are the instruments of change.
-Keri Hulme, The Bone People
