WEST POINT FELLOWSHIP INC
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : j*******n@w**********m.o*g
Mission Statement
To engage urban youth through music instruction and performance; cultivating artistically connected, socially conscious, productive adults.
About This Cause
West Point School of Music was founded in 2011 with the social justice mission to engage urban youth through music instruction and performance; cultivating artistically connected, socially conscious, productive adults. We create cultural and economic opportunities within and for the Black community by building a pipeline of African American musicians into Chicago music. In a city where Black youth are far less likely to have access to arts education than their white and Asian peers, we reduce barriers to music education and performance for underserved BIPOC youth on Chicago’s south and west sides through free music instruction and instruments. We use the steel drum alongside traditional concert band instruments to promote African American heritage music and to enhance the cultural relevance of quality music education to Chicago’s Black youth. Building on the legacy of former slaves in Trinidad who created the steel drum, we see a path where Black heritage music rebuilds confidence and pride in our young people, inspiring them to pursue personal excellence, to persevere through challenges, and to achieve their goals. Our history and key achievements Since its inception, WPSoM has become a prized community organization with a reputation for high-impact music programming. Founded in 2011, WPSoM began with 5 students who learned to play instruments in the executive director’s living room. Now in 2023, we serve over 500 youth in 8 different schools across 8 Chicago neighborhoods where music education does not otherwise exist. This growth was supported through recognition from funders of the potential long-term impact of music education for Chicago’s low-income, African American communities. In 2013, a Kapoor Foundation grant made it possible to purchase instruments for programming in WP’s first school, Kellman Elementary in North Lawndale. In July 2014, Julian Champion began working full-time with the organization as its first executive director. In 2017, WP expanded into its first rented space, which allowed the organization to begin instrument repair and steel drum manufacturing operations. Since 2021, WP has received national recognition with game-changing funding: Chicago Cultural Treasures (2021), NEA (2021), Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority Restore, Renew, Reinvest (2022), and The Lewis Prize for Music (2023), and Canegie Hall’s PlayUSA (2023). West Point is also a Core-level member of the University of Chicago’s Community Programs Accelerator, a collaborative relationship granting access to the University’s vast resources and recognizes West Point as a high impact organization in the community. As part of this partnership, we are working with the University’s data scientists to measure how music education impacts children’s social-emotional changes over time, providing research opportunities for members of the University community and impact data about our program. In 2023, WPSoM purchased a 24,500 sq. ft. former school building in Chicago’s south side neighborhood of Morgan Park to house all of its operations. Services provided in the rehabbed/expanded space include strategic initiatives to catalyze community cultural and economic activity: after school and Saturday music classes for >500 children, music and arts performance space, park development for festivals and community events, and music instrument repair, steel drum manufacturing and retail sales. Promoting African American culture, this project reinvests in the heritage of a key Chicago population and builds a cultural community center in an area where there is otherwise little cultural infrastructure. Our students West Point serves 500 primarily African American youth ages 8-18 in Chicago neighborhoods: Roseland, South Shore, Englewood, Woodlawn, and Auburn/Gresham. The youth we serve face pervasive economic and social challenges constructed and perpetuated by the City’s history of racial segregation, economic disinvestment, and cultural devaluation. Unequal access to education and poverty are key challenges facing our students. In West Point’s service areas, 49% of residents have a high school diploma or less (Chicago Health Atlas, 2021). This low educational attainment is both caused by and reinforces other systemic factors. Unemployment rates in the communities we serve average over 3 times the city-wide rate (American Community Survey 2015-2019) and nearly half of residents live below the poverty line (Chicago Health Atlas, 2020). The impact on children is even greater. The public schools WPSOM serves have above average rates of low-income students: Kellman (96%), Bond (96%), Bret Harte (76%), Emmett Till (95%), Shoesmith (74%), Whistler (86%) Elementary Schools, and Wendell Phillips High School (96%) (llinois Report Card). A 2005 study from the International Foundation for Music Research found that music education increases educational attainment, lifelong earnings, lowers incarceration rates, and improves a child’s interpersonal skills. Yet, Chicago’s Black youth are more than 1000 times less likely to have access to music education in their schools or communities than their white peers and more than 10,000 times less likely than Asian peers (“Arts Education in Chicago Public Schools,” 2021). Lack of access puts Chicago’s Black youth at a life-long disadvantage. Arts education is a key resource in building safe communities, promoting economic opportunity, and increasing overall health and wellbeing in individuals. At West Point School of Music we are meeting this challenge through our programs every day. Our Programs 1) Urban Music Makers (UMM) builds a school musical ensemble of 25 to 30 students drawn from the 2nd through 8th grade. These young people learn to read and perform music on an instrument from the standard concert band family, which WPSoM provides without cost to the student. Students learn classical pieces from the so-called standard band repertoire as well as works by composers of the African diaspora and Chicago composers. We bring students from multiple schools together to form a concert band and, in this way, build relationships and bridges across the community. 2) Celebration on Steel (COS) is the percussion component of our program and introduces students to the steel pan, or steel pan, drum. The steel drum is unique to WPSoM’s pedagogy of promoting culturally relevant music education to the students we serve. This specialized instrument has deep roots in African-Caribbean culture, evolving out of the early musical practices of Trinidad’s enslaved Africans and Afro-descendants who had to make do with discarded materials for constructing their instruments. Most have heard the haunting melodies of the steel drum but few know its roots as an instrument created by and for Black people in the Western diaspora. COS programming is relevant and reflective of the community as the only steel drum program in the city centering Afro-Caribbean heritage music in a global context. Click here to see Celebration on Steel in action. We engage UMM and COS students through: After school instructional time Saturday conservatory Band camps offered during the regular school breaks Advanced band practices and training sessions Four concerts annually for the young musicians to perform before the faculty, peers, parents, and the community. 3) Paid Internships provide advanced students in both UMM and COS with career and job readiness activities. Participating students learn marketable skills in instrument manufacture and repair. They gain leadership skills through peer mentoring as leaders in our summer band camps. We offer paid internships in: Instrument repair, teaching interns in-demand repair skills using traditional and current technologies in brass and woodwind instruments. Steel drum manufacturing, providing older students with experience in building high-quality instruments.