About: This research project explores literacy and literacy learning in community settings where youth and adults make beats, scratch records, play musical instruments, tinker with digital audio workstations, and generally make a lot of noise. The project assembles an emergent network of musicians and sound artists in the Detroit metro area for these space-making activities. Three questions drive this project: 1. How literacy formations circulate through community networks. 2. How artists working in the aural humanities learn to teach. 3. How young people use sound to compose about their vision of justice.
Collaborators: Pontiac Public Library, Accent Pontiac, Baldwin Center, 20+ Detroit metro area musicians and sound artists.
Methods: Participatory co-design, collaborative sense making sessions, aural humanities.
Ethical outcomes: Curating teaching networks among artists, building teaching capacity of artists, providing asset-based programming for youth.
Funding: Humanities Arts and Research Program development grant, Michigan State University. Ableton education trade-in program.
