Door Dog Music (DDM) is an international live music production lab that promotes societal change and cultural engagement through the preservation of some of the world’s most endangered traditional musical forms. DDM fosters experiments in inter-cultural diversity with risk-taking music production programs that create social spaces for cultural exploration and ignite social activism through music.
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PHOTOGRAPHS A collection of images from Door Dog Music |
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VIDEO Highlights from Door Dog’s 2009 Youth Orchestra (Click to play) |
In the past 15 years, DDM has created opportunities for intensive dialogue among young people from different parts of the world by creating traditional music schools in Kyrgyzstan and Taiwan. The organization aims to inspire the next generation to learn about issues facing global and local communities by exploring traditional music compositions and techniques.
DDM’s arts education programs give young people the opportunity to learn from each other as well as from experienced musicians. They participate in global programs such as The Ritual Project, which connects young people in the Bay Area with their peers at traditional music schools in other countries through a combination of live and virtual performance with master musicians. At the San Francisco World Music Festival, they recently highlighted the music and cultural traditions of the indigenous Thao community of central Taiwan.
The continued support of the Sam Mazza Foundation allows DDM to continue to develop and implement programs that work toward shifting global and local attitudes across issues impacting environmental, human and animal rights. One such program is the International Music Youth Orchestra, created to promote and preserve ethnic music in the Bay Area. The orchestra provides local youth from oppressed or endangered cultures of the world with an opportunity to express themselves through traditional music forms such as the ragas of South India and the chamber music of China.
DDM’s local and international youth programs allow young people to learn firsthand from master artisans of instruments and musical forms as varied as the mysterious prayer bowls of Tibet, fiery tabla drums of India, haunting shakahachi flutes of Japan and the bellowing didjeridu of Australia’s Aboriginal people. Its commitment to teaching traditional forms contributes to their preservation by increasing the supply chain for traditional music and masters around the world.
George Washington Carver School of Arts and Science (GWC) is a small, innovative charter high school in the Sacramento City Unified School District. GWC, which opened in 2008 by absorbing a failing high school, is the first public high school in California to use Waldorf methodology. With this approach, the school has successfully created an interdisciplinary environment that integrates practical, artistic and conceptual learning experiences.
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PHOTOGRAPHS A small collection of images from the Sam Mazza Garden at |
The school’s culture and curriculum are based on critical thinking (exercising students’ heads), creative expression (opening their hearts) and wholesome action (using their hands). The Waldorf method has not only fostered academic achievement, with 95 percent of students now passing the California High School Exit Exam, but it has created a community where students and faculty contribute to societal and cultural renewal.
The innovative methodologies and quality of education at GWC are due in large part to grants from the Sam Mazza Foundation. The grants give students access to resources and opportunities that fall outside the realm of public funding but have proven instrumental to their success.
The foundation has sustained the school’s Summer Arts Academy, operated in partnership with the City of Sacramento’s Department of Parks and Recreation. The Summer Academy, which orients new students to the Waldorf approach through intensive arts exposure, is considered one of the finest enrichment programs in the district. The foundation also enabled the school to use nature as a textbook by providing the planning, development and start-up funding for its garden. The Sam Mazza Garden is a school-wide project aimed at increasing GWC’s edible landscape. It creates a space for practical, relevant learning in nature. All of the students work in the garden sowing seeds, composting, building bird and bat houses, and harvesting fruits and vegetables. Students also organize and run farmers markets and participate in community action days where they contribute to their neighborhoods’ sustainability initiatives.
The Sam Mazza Foundation’s support for GWC exemplifies its commitment to strengthening communities through the support of well-designed education initiatives that help equip young people with the skills they need to make a positive contribution to an ever-changing world.
Learn more about GWC at their website by clicking here.
The Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology (BAYCAT) is a nonprofit community digital media arts producer that educates, empowers, and employs youth and adults from one of San Francisco’s poorest and most under-served areas. Bayview Hunters Point and its surrounding neighborhoods have a child poverty rate of 50 percent, more than 3.5 times higher than the city average, and a 38 percent high school drop-out rate.
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VIDEO A collection of episodes from BAYCAT’s Zoom In series (Click to play or to select additional episodes.) |
Research shows that digital technology can improve student achievement and test scores. It also can effectively facilitate highly collaborative learning environments relevant to students’ experiences as casual but intensive technology users. With BAYCAT, students use technology to tell their stories, engage with the world beyond their neighborhood, and explore current issues and events.
BAYCAT inspires young people to positively transform themselves, their communities and the world through the powerful storytelling format of digital media and design.
In a renovated, 5,000-square foot facility with state-of-the-art equipment, BAYCAT uses arts, technology and digital media to engage students positively in their education careers. The organization offers cutting-edge curricula in film and television production, motion graphics and animation, graphic design, and Web design. Students learn technical skills as well as the soft skills necessary to enable them to compete for jobs in the rapidly growing digital media market.
BAYCAT has received two unrestricted grants from the Sam Mazza Foundation. This capital infusion has allowed the organization to continue to develop and deliver programs including:
- ZOOM IN, a four-part series on YouTube created and produced by BAYCAT students,
- a summer media camp,
- off-site courses at Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center and The San Francisco School of the Arts,
- a community cinema program, and
- production internships for burgeoning artists.
The Sam Mazza Foundation’s support for BAYCAT demonstrates the power of philanthropy on the lives of young people and their communities.
Learn more about BAYCAT at their website by clicking here.