Giving Youth a Voice

“Empowering youth through the expressive art of storytelling in song”

Giving Youth A Voice teaches the basic elements of songwriting. Through hands-on experience, youth learn to rhyme, fit meter, and choose colorful and descriptive words by creating their own song.

Giving Youth A Voice offers experiential workshops and artist residencies for elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, hospitals, health centers and community organizations.

There are three songwriting programs:

• Songs For Class Study
- A curriculum enrichment songwriting workshop taught in schools as a residency or after-school setting. Songwriting can be used as a creative tool to explore curriculum-based themes, while focusing on the fundamentals of songwriting as an art form and means for self-discovery and expression. Combining class studies and song will enhance participants understanding of lessons, as well as foster community and commonality amongst their peers. Robin will collaborate with teachers and students within a framework of academics.
• 8-10 Week Program for Youth At Risk
 – These songwriting/recording workshops help increase self-esteem, connecting youth with similar experiences. We learn new coping skills and hear the power in our own voices as we sing the songs we have written. We begin by listening to songs. The music stimulates a response, which leads to the lyric writing. 
We frame each song in a style of music they prefer. The youth realize they now have a tool, which can help them express their emotions in a creative and positive way, that they hold the key to their own life and the direction it will go no matter what their present circumstances may be. At the end the youth have a CD of songs the group has produced to forever be a reminder of what they accomplished.
• The Power of Healing Through Music
For Special Needs Youth
 – This songwriting and singing workshop can be facilitated in schools, hospitals, assisted living communities, clinical support centers, or wherever there is need.