Check it.
Congratulations to the Smell and Vera Project who both had huge birthdays in January! The Smell turned 10 at the beginning of the month and threw four great shows to celebrate. You can read more about the Smell’s success in this recent article.
And last week, the Vera Project had an anniversary too – they celebrated 7 awesome years with a show on the 27th. We’re so happy to have these two venues around and very excited to celebrate many more birthdays in the future!
Providence, RI's AS220 has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Rhode Island Foundation for the development of an inner-city youth resource center that will help place participants in educational programs and internships. Congratulations to AS220! For more information about the org's great work, visit their website or check out the AS220 spotlight in Wiretap magazine.
We raised more than $1500 in one day during the Facebook Challenge as a brand new Cause jumping in late in the game and starting with just a handful of members.
Our competition had a serious leg up on us and we still gave them a run for their money. . . at first.
And fourth out of all the Facebook causes ain't so bad. I mean consider the competition--"bring metal bands to south africa" or "cheerleading should be recognized as an olympic sport." We should be proud!
Thank you x 1,000,000!
AMP is participating in the Facebook Causes Giving Challenge today! If you haven’t had the chance to donate to AMP yet, now is the perfect time - your donation could help AMP win $1,000! We'd really appreciate any donation you could give to AMP from now until 12:00 PM PST tomorrow.
Please log into Facebook and visit our cause page to donate!
The Giving Challenge, sponsored by the Case Foundation, awards $1,000 to the cause with the highest number of donations everyday and will award larger grants to the causes with the highest number of donations by the end of the challenge on February 1st.
We don't need to raise the most amount of money, we just need the most donations, so any amount would be really helpful. The money
you donate to AMP (and the money we hopefully win from the challenge) will go to support this year's programs: publishing the AMP book, the exchange program and holding a conference in the fall.
Thank you so much for all your support and be sure to spread the word!
The Stranger, Seattle's weekly newspaper, has a great article this week about the importance of the all-ages music being made in Seattle's Eastside suburbs. Thanks to the Old Fire House in Redmond, Bellevue's Ground Zero and the Kirkland Teen Union Building, the Eastside has produced some of the best bands to come out of Seattle. Check out the article here to read about how the future of Seattle's music is thriving in its suburbs.
"How are youth gonna care about voting or anything if they don’t know what community is?”
That's what AMP's first intern Diaris, then 17, said to me when I told her that sometimes it was hard to raise money for a project like AMP because things like music and art opportunities for young people can seem like luxury items compared to issues of crumbling public schools, the war and military recruitment, global warming, and getting young people to vote.
Diaris grew up in Oakland, where she got involved in Youth Movement Records, a youth-run record company. At YMR, Diaris had a chance to be the community leader she wanted to be, through a forum that was relevant to her--hip hop. Now a student on scholarship at UCLA, Diaris is already running a lot of things, but man, watch up for her in about 2 – 5 years. This is the case for hundreds of thousands of young people that find their way to leadership and civic engagement through first being part of a music community.
Does this sound familiar to you? Did you care more about Neil Young, Bob Marley, Fugazi or Public Enemy than Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton as a young person? Have you worked your butt off to organize benefit shows and arts events to help support social and environmental causes more often than you have lobbied? Has it felt more powerful to write or hear a song about justice than to hear lip service given to it through speeches and advertising?
If so, the All-ages Movement Project could use your support.
AMP is a network of organizations that promote independent music and art and build power with young people to create a culture that supports social change. As a national organization, AMP is cultivating relationships to raise the visibility of this work while sharing knowledge and creating tools that will make it stronger and more sustainable.
With your help, this year we can:
-publish, distribute and tour our book and educational workshops based on ten case studies of historic and successful organizations such as ABC No Rio (New York, NY), The Spot (Denver, CO), and the Neutral Zone (Ann Arbor, MI)
-continue and expand our leadership exchange program
-host the first national gathering of youth music organizations
-hire a development director to help raise money for both the national and local AMP organizations
Without the support of the people that get it, none of this will possible and the potential of alternative kinds of youth leadership, independent arts infrastructure, and community gathering spaces will be overlooked.
Please consider a donation to fuel the movement.
Pictured above - YMR at AS220 in Providence Rhode Island in AMP's leadership
exchange program.
PS- check out AMPs work in 2007.
In a genre where the term "independent" has come to indicate a sound rather than an ideology of resisting corporate pressure and privileges, the bands Xiu Xiu and Fucked Up have take a stand against a couple hands that feed the music industry.
Check out the full story on Daily Swarm.
Yesterday the Oregon Liquor Control Council disappointingly voted 3-2 against relaxing regulations around minors being allowed in venues where entertainment occurs.
The past few months, the Portland music community has been trying to work with the OLCC on this in order to open up the music scene to young music fans and musicians. The change would give young folks viable, safe, and monitored options for participating in Portland's music community while simultaneously nurturing the long term health of the music scene and the creative community in general.
Cary Clark, who organizes the all-ages music festival PDX Pop Now, has been organizing and writing tirelessly about the issue for the Portland Mercury.
AMP would like to stockpile some stories of people with similar experiences in organizing around youth access to music at the state and local level in effort to figure out a way to share the best strategies and messaging.
Add your thoughts to this thread in the Forums and can someone explain to me why sports facilities don't have to go through this?
We've updated the Resources tab with a cool new wiki and added the AMP Forums so you can hang out with each other online.
Enjoy!
