Artists

CitySongs is a creative arts based youth and community development program involving kids in the 4th-8th grades. Through diverse music participation and strength based social work/education, we help inner-city youth identify and reach their individual potential and strengthen the community. Unlike any other youth program, CitySongs fosters healthy youth development through music and social work activities. CitySongs challenges at-risk youth to master music and performance skills, to make aesthetic contributions to their communities, to take leadership roles, and to set and achieve their goals. In turn, these children provide live performances to inspire, strengthen, and vitalize their communities. CitySongs kids enrich our community with their artistic talents, their compelling stories of overcoming adversity, and their efforts to celebrate diversity and peace.

CitySongs accepts all interested youth in 4th-8th grades. Our target neighborhoods offer few opportunities for young people's ongoing, high-quality engagement in the arts, or for families to experience affordable live performances. Although open to all, participants, CitySongs kids primarily come from (and our rehearsals are held in) neighborhoods with high rates of crime, youth poverty, unemployment, and school dropout. These youth are often denied such basic human rights as full participation in family, cultural and social life, the right to develop to one