activities For Educators

• The VMC provides a wide range of presentations, consultation, and in-service professional development resources for Fine Arts specialists: locally, regionally, and across the country. These include educational presentations and resources on a full range of global music and dance genres. In addition, we can provide interactive, hands-on educational presentations for all time periods of Western music, including especially Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods.
• Our Mission commitment to "research, teaching, and advocacy" means that we prioritize arts education service to neighboring communities, as well as to our region and across the nation. In addition, we are active voices in international dialogues on music education, advocacy, and community arts.
• VMC teaching staff and affiliates include expert pedagogues specializing in folk and traditional music and dance from: northern and eastern Europe; northern, western, and southern Africa; the Americas; the Indian subcontinent; and Polynesia, in addition to film music and a very wide range of popular and vernacular musics from the USA.

OPTIONS

• We can provide classes, ensembles, service presentations, and guest artists & teachers.
• Typically, our service to educational specialists fits one or more of the following templates:
  • Straightforward interactive presentations (concerts, mini-concerts, etc) by VMC ensembles or partner groups, targeted for specific student profiles;
  • In-service presentations, specifically for teachers, which integrate materials, strategies, lesson plans, and practical exercises for teaching these music & dance genres in their own situations;
  • More long-term service-learning and/or internship-style situations, in which select students or student groups have the opportunity to participate in supervised apprenticeships with VMC personnel and groups;
  • "On-demand" presentations: Fine Arts specialists are encouraged to contact VMC to inquire about specific topics or genres of music and dance. In essence, this means that a specialist can contact VMC and say "I have a module coming up on X or Y, could you give me a presentation of Z minutes on music and/or dance that fits this module?" Most commonly, the answer to this question is an emphatic "Yes!"
• Note: While the VMC ideal is that such presentations should occur face-to-face (because active participation is such an important part of our ethos and that of these traditions), we also have the technological capacity and presentation skills to provide similar offerings via Internet video-conferencing. This means that an Arts specialist - particularly in a rural or undeserved community - need only provide us with a high-speed internet connection and a roomful of students. We'll do the rest!

Professional Training

Young Professionals

A central and unique part of the VMC's core mission is the training of young arts professionals: young singers, dancers, players, teachers, and organizers who, through their VMC experience, are empowered to advocate and lead on behalf of vernacular art forms in their own campuses, communities, and future activities. Our students and alumni apprentice in the skills of combining speaking, playing, singing, dancing, and teaching on behalf of participatory community arts, and such activities are part of every VMC initiative. VMC alumni are uniquely positioned as advocates within and beyond the university: on curriculum committees, to state education coordinating boards, ISD school boards, and Boards of Regents, but also to other arts organizations, educators, and community leaders.

VMC alumni embody and promulgate cultural diversity and a vision of inclusive excellence. This aspect of the Mission is coalesced by the VMC Scholarship, the Outreach Scholars program, and the Certificate in Community Arts Entrepreneurship, but all VMC students and alumni are powerful and articulate advocates in support of these ideals.