2015-255-E Arts - Max Puhala Arts Grant

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DocuSign Envelope ID:684BD205-E201-4917-A887-C6D2D5CC92C7 Community Impact The project's public component includes the six weekly workshops, beginning on Monday, July 131h, the direct arts service to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and the posting of the final project online for the public to stream and download. The publicly available CDs online will impact the hundreds of people who listen to my music by serving as an example of the exceptional talents of individuals generally thought of as less-capable. The CD will also provide each participant a truly unique part of themselves to share amongst their friends and family. Currently, The Arc of the Triangle has 8 individuals with developmental disabilities who will be directly impacted by the project. The 8 individuals have confirmed to participate in the tentative six 1-hour workshops beginning Monday, July 13th, 2015 and ending Monday, August 17th, 2015. That number is expected to rise over 10 as more families learn of the opportunity in the coming weeks. Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities can have severe difficulty communicating their emotions and feelings, and this project will provide an open, safe,judgement-free space where the participants may musically and cathartically express themselves. These workshops are not guided, or imposed music lessons; they are opportunities to participate in a freeing space where individuals may play and sing whatever instrument they want in whatever way they choose.Additionally, rarely, if ever, does an individual with intellectual or developmental disabilities have the opportunity to possess artistic ownership of a musical composition which they made completely on his/her own, and I will to provide this avenue of expression for those served by The Arc of the Triangle. Artist Experience Max Puhala is a Chapel Hill musician with over a decade of professional musical experience composing, performing, audio engineering, and teaching. He is a former AmeriCorps member who served over 1,000 hours at the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Music through the AmeriCorps program, MusicianCorps, where he expanded the department's community outreach activities and engaged the UNC-Chapel Hill music majors as volunteers in the community. During his service at UNC-Chapel Hill, Max coordinated and led participatory workshops similar to the proposed workshops in this grant for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities served by Residential Services Incorporated, planned and taught music lessons for at-risk youth at Orange County Family Resource Centers, and managed outdoor public performances at the Carrboro Farmers' Market with audiences of over 300 attendees. Prior to his AmeriCorps service, Max was a professional performing musician, playing guitar, bass, and drums in various Greensboro and Raleigh-based rock bands for eight years. Max currently works as an afterschool music educator for at-risk youth at Communities in Schools of Orange County, were he develops and teaches his own 15-day Bucket Drumming Curriculum at seven middle schools in the districts of Orange County Schools and Chapel-Hill Carrboro City Schools. He also is the Beat Lab Program Assistant at Communities in Schools of Durham County,where he develops and teaches his own in-school and afterschool hip-hop production curriculum with an emphasis on computer literacy for middle and high school students attending Durham Public Schools. In the evenings, he works as an Audio Engineer at Last Chance Studio, a Durham-based recording collective with two fully- functioning studios. During the weekend, he volunteers weekly at Dynamic Community Charter School, the Tammy Lynn Center, and Residential Services Inc., leading hands-on, participatory recorded music workshops for children and adults with autism and developmental disabilities. He has produced numerous full-length albums of music composed entirely by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities since July of 2014, all of which can be heard at www.pushplaysing.org. These participatory recorded music workshops are exactly what are being proposed in this grant for The Arc of the Triangle.