Our Mission:

Music that Makes Community practices communal song-sharing that inspires deep spiritual connection, brave shared leadership, and sparks the possibility of transformation in our world. We offer resources, training, and encouragement to individuals, organizations, and communities in the dynamic power of singing to connect others and ourselves.

Vision Statement:

Rooted in both Christian contemplative and activist traditions, Music That Makes Community envisions a liberative culture that empowers individuals and communities to claim and use the power of singing to heal our spirits, nurture our common lives, and work for justice. We aspire to create spaces that are laboratories of learning, discovery, and communal joy.

Guiding Principles:

We believe:  

• Community is a basic human need
• Song is a basic human language
• Creativity is a basic human impulse
• Each human is a unique manifestation of creation
• Culture is a powerful container of and influence on the human experience
• Healing, transformation, and wholeness can flow where the above are fostered and tended.
  

We value:

• Exploration, curiosity and playfulness; listening and learning from our experiences
• The wide variety of human identity, expression, and experience
• Participation over performance
• The contribution of each voice and its essential place in community
• The roles of leaders and community, inviting everyone to step into leadership
• Flexibility and adaptability 
  

We practice: 

• Affirmation of skills, personhood, and experiences
• Radical welcome, inclusion, and hospitality
• Shared leadership
• Noticing rather than judging
• Singing more, talking less
• Culture making that is compassionate and dream-worthy
• Centering those who have been on the margins
• Full embodiment of our music-making, including sign, movement, dance, and other instruments
• Using the full range of tools, technology, and space to overcome barriers to singing together

Rooted in our mission, vision, and practices, we:

• Partner with hosts to plan workshops in their communities, widening the circle of people who have experienced paperless song leading and training new leaders;
  
  
• Support our community of presenters who work to refine our practices of song leading (and the pedagogy required to effectively teach it to others) and expand the repertoire of songs that can be shared;
  
  
• Serve the network of practitioners that has grown over the seventeen years we've been facilitating Music that Makes Community events by connecting them with one another, offering tools for building a repertoire of songs, and supporting centers of paperless song leading practice through community events and local practice groups.