Learning and Media Lab Curriculum

Storytelling & Vulnerability

Explore key questions: What is it about storytelling that connects people? What are the elements of storytelling that captures our attention and imagination? How do we know when we are being vulnerable as storytellers and performers, and how do we get into that zone?

Creating Media: Preparing For Studio Recording

Unpack what it means to be an artist collaborator in the recording process. Who are the key players in the studio, what is the process, and what is the mindset to bring into the space? How do you keep up the energy without an audience? Practice gaining confidence in collaborating with your recording team.

Artist’s Life I

Discover the educational and career paths of experts who explore storytelling, think deeply about community engagement and incorporate media into their artistic practice. After reviewing the artists’ work and background, you and your peers will develop a shared document of questions. This will become the guide and/or a jumping off point to a collaborative interview of the artist. You are invited to ask anything, follow up with anything that feels relevant to you in the moment. What’s on your mind? You drive the conversation.

Community Engagement Prep

Explore with your peers your approach to a 1:1 “concert experience” that you will develop for someone who has a different relationship to music than you. What will drive your first conversation with the person you have identified to do this “concert” for? What are your strategies to remain curious and open in order to inform your programming and talking points? Decide where this “concert” will take place. Think out loud about how you want to stretch musically and what most excites you right now in your own music making. How will this play a role in possible programming?

Artist’s Life II

Community Engagement: 1:1 Concert Experience

Recording in Studio for the NPR Broadcast/Podcast

Step into the professional studio with the music producer, studio engineer, and collaborative artists. Work together for an hour to record like other professional artists do today with multiple takes. Next, take a seat at the mic for a 30-minute conversational style interview with host/co-host to discuss your perspective on music, life, insights into the issues you care most about.

Reflection: Bringing the Learning Forward

Investigate the questions, realizations, and points of inspiration you had over the course of the Learning and Media Lab. Articulate some ways the learning and connections you have made can catalyze your own artistic vision and/or pathway moving forward.