The Opportunity:
Real and Lasting Change
This is business development.
This is community investment.
This is lasting change.
Education, Artist Development & Community Partnership
The National Independent Venue Foundation strives for authentic investment in the diversity of our communities, empowering independent live venues and promoters to have an opportunity to be catalysts for change. Steeped in entrepreneurial spirit and connected to audiences across generations and backgrounds, these venues can be hubs for social impact, combining education, artist development, cross-sector partnership, and economic and workforce development to strengthen their communities and their businesses. With thousands of venues and promoter members, NIVA and the Foundation have assembled a unique distribution network that offers a unique opportunity to create and sustain change nationwide.
Independent venues can be a new kind of cultural center. Venues can become living classrooms, creating daytime programming for school groups, offering performances and school partnerships that engage underserved populations in music-making (songwriting workshops; music productions; after-school ensembles).
They can invest in local artists, providing new streams of revenue, helping artists diversify their work and gain stability. They can apply their nimble skills in relationship building to spark collaborative partnerships with cultural, civic and social service organizations. And they can commit to building the workforce and create needed pathways for BIPOC individuals to join the music and hospitality industries at a living wage and with a sustainable career future, and to develop, own and operate venues and festivals in their communities.
As venues create their own strategies for innovation in their communities, NIVF initiatives offer a framework for activating the deep impact possible.
For partnership opportunities, please contact Bri Buchanan or Devin DeHart at partnerships@nivassoc.org.
INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCES
Drawing on artists across genres, these performances can showcase ways music crosses boundaries and cultures and becomes a “universal language” that promotes connection, expression, and understanding. They become opportunities for students to experience venues they might never otherwise visit. With experiential activities laced throughout the event, students get to experience music-making directly, in an intimate exchange with the performers.
CURRICULUM-BASED SCHOOL RESIDENCIES
Artist-Teachers have the ability to offer a different creative pathway into a variety of curricula. The legacy of protest music can inspire new ideas for National History Day projects; classroom-wide songwriting process can open up themes in English Language Arts and other language or writing courses. Working closely with teachers and principals, music venues and local artists can form lasting partnerships that become valued community contributions to student learning.
STUDENT-CENTERED ALBUM PRODUCTION
A variety of digital music-making applications give students the ability to quickly become content creators. Music venues and artist-teachers / working musicians can bring their real-world experience to this process by mentoring small groups, whole classrooms and even entire schools in the process of writing, recording, and mixing/mastering original songs and albums. These projects can invite students into hands-on learning and collaboration with seasoned professionals in everything from creative writing to composition to engineering to performance to marketing and business development.
COMMUNITY-BASED SONGWRITING PROJECTS
With a goal of building community partnership and offering access to arts experiences to those who don’t readily have them, venues have the opportunity to collaborate with a host of local organizations - from groups supporting immigrant and refugee youth, to centers for adults with cognitive disabilities, to engaging individuals or groups in collaborative songwriting, all as a means of sharing new stories and giving new voices a platform.
COMMUNITY COMMISSIONS
Venues can also look to be active producers of new work, encouraging new music, investing in local artists, and opening their stages to new talent. Artist commissions featuring local musicians created in collaboration with particular communities and groups can spur new sounds and new conversations, as well as new opportunities to build audiences and celebrate community.
The pilot program is expected to launch within the next 12 months.