I hope you’ve been getting through the week alright – we’re practically on break already! Today I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about MUSIC Matters, a student organization on campus that I am fortunate enough to be co-president for this year.
MUSIC Matters’ mission is to utilize the unifying power of music to drive social impact in the community. This is usually achieved through a variety of events each year, including local talent showcases, battle of the band competitions, and our capstone April event, SpringFest, which features live music, food trucks, student organizations, corporate activations, and more. In addition to these events, MUSIC Matters spearheads three of their own social ventures: the CoMMunity Partnership grant program, the Michigan Overnight Experience for Detroit-area highschoolers and the Big Thinkers Scholarship.
In response to the context of the past few months, MUSIC Matters has adjusted much of its programming. Over the summer, we made donations to the Henry Ford Hospital and to a campaign through another student organization, Heal Move Shift, to help first responders during the COVID Pandemic. In support of the protests against police- and government-sanctioned violence against BIPOC, they arranged a benefit concert and donated the proceeds to the Detroit Justice Center. They have also pivoted our local talent events to be virtual, utilizing Instagram Live to stream these performances. As for SpringFest, the MUSIC Matters team is working extremely hard to make it the best it can be while prioritizing the health and safety of everyone involved. Stay tuned for updates by following our Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.
If you want to get involved in MUSIC Matters, you can still join! Go to our website, then under the “About Us” title go to the “Get Involved” tab. Here, you can find the application for 2020-2021, as well as check out more information on each of the committees and initiatives.
That’s all for this week! Hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving week (even though it may look a little bit different this year) and find some time to reset.
We are in need of a revolution. No, I’m not talking Bernie Sanders; no, this is a revolution in creativity. To remind ourselves that art is a vital aspect of hope and that we must utilize it if we want to change the way that we view the world.
It seems like every time I open a new webpage these days, I’m flooded with Facebook fights over colors of coffee cups, posts of people taking pictures of their cell phones in dingy bathroom mirrors, presidential candidates talking talking talking without any action, and terrible acts of hatred pockmarking this earth, scarring it, destroying it.
Keep scrolling and it’s a wonder why we’ve all become so cynical of the world. Yes, it’s important to keep a finger on the news, but when we get so bogged down with it, is there any hope of returning from the deep end?
I believe there is, and so I’ve decided to start bringing hope to the world in my own little way. And that way is through art.
At the beginning of the school year, I stumbled upon a few blogs that dedicate themselves to exploring art and other visual cultures, such as photography, design, animation, painting, installation art, architecture, drawing, and street art. These blogs, such as Colossal, My Modern Met, and Laughing Squid to name a few, are already doing what I want to do: they are hunting down all of the amazingly innovative and passionate and beautiful things that people globally are creating and sharing with the world.
I want to bring it closer to home, and share these little nuggets of inspiration and hope with my world. About once a day, I try to share at least one link to Facebook, highlighting anything from:
Throughout the constant scrolling of anger and suffering and irritation at the world, I hope that these posts remind my friends that art can be powerful. It can lift us up, it can bring us together, it can confuse us and spur heated conversations in their own way, it can be magical, it can be an escape. But most of all, it is a way to communicate with the world in a non-violent way. It’s a way to tell people that they have the ability to create beauty, to change people’s thinking, to challenge the way that they see the world. To remind people that among the bad, there is good stuff happening, too.
Take the events that happened Friday night in Paris. Jean Jullien’s simplistic image of the Eiffel Tower holding up a circle of peace went viral within 12 hours.
Peace for Paris – Jean Jullien
In an interview with NPR, Jullien says, “I turned on the French radio. I heard that there was an attack, and my first reaction was to draw. It’s this sort of moment where you don’t necessarily try to understand everything coherently. It’s more of a state of shock and sadness and anger and all these very sort of raw feelings. So for me, it’s just sort of trying to summarize these feelings in one image with my way of reacting,” Jullien says. “I shared it online as a reaction, not really thought through at all.”
What’s interesting is that he didn’t want it to be viral. He felt uncomfortable being in the spotlight as the “creator,” benefitting from exposure during this time of tragedy. But, his reaction achieved the revolution that he had hoped.
Jullien says, “The idea was just for people to have a tool to communicate, and to respond and to share solidarity and peace. It seems that’s what most people got out of it. So in that sense, if it was useful for people to share and communicate their loss and need for peace, then that’s what it was meant to be.”
The takeaway? The size of the action doesn’t matter: it can be a larger-than-life fabric flower that lights up at night; a powerfully minimal black and white peace sign, or a simple Facebook share. All that’s important is that the art brings people together, it makes them notice what’s going on around them, it makes them feel agency in the world, that they can make a difference by doing something. This Earth is amazing, yes in a tragic way that it can be so self-destructive, but mostly, because of the billions of people who have the power to share a little art with the world in any way or form that they can.
P.S. Sharing art is wonderful and definitely can lift people’s spirits and hearts. But, generous donations can also provide resources and necessities that human beings require. Please if you can, support the French Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, or Friends of Fondation de France, Inc. Thank you!
Seems like more artists have been making waves in house-related art! Â A group of architects was recently commissioned to design dollhouses in the styles of their choosing. Â If you think you know what a dollhouse should look like, guess again.
These houses were on display at the London Design Festival last month and were auctioned off to raise money for the children’s disability charity KIDS.
And you know what is even better than art raising money for charity? Â Art directly influencing charitable causes. Â Each house was required to contain “a unique feature to make life easier for a child who is disabled.”
How cool is that?
What I love about each of the designs is the abstractness that still maintains its functionality.
Children with their uninhibited imaginations, can make playhouses out of anything. Â Blankets, couches, and some string have made for some of the best (not to mention coziest) residences of my life. Â What I love most about this endeavor, is that it brings modern architecture (and modern aesthetics) into the consciousness of youngsters and also raises the public’s consciousness of children with disabilities.
When I was young there seemed to be a stigma around modern and abstract art (not to mention a major one around kids with disabilities that still persists today). Â Both modern art and disabled people can be labeled as inaccessible, or foreign, and as something that only a small niche of society can appreciate. Â These dollhouses demonstrate that the niche of modernism can extend beyond the adult age group and that modern art can be something useful and pedagogical. Â It can be integrated into the everyday activities of four and five year-olds and be something that sticks with them all their life.
Who knows? Â One of these dollhouse designs may inspire the next charitable Frank Lloyd Wright.
against BIPOC, they arranged a benefit concert and donated the proceeds to the Detroit Justice Center. They have also pivoted our local talent events to be virtual, utilizing Instagram Live to stream these performances. As for SpringFest, the MUSIC Matters team is working extremely hard to make it the best it can be while prioritizing the health and safety of everyone involved. Stay tuned for updates by following our Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. 
