WHO, WHAT AND WHY IS COMMUNITY CHORUS PROJECT?
Community Chorus Project (CCP) is a newly created, Chapel Hill, NC based arts company with a mission to create community – one chorus at a time. CCP will work to plant lifelong seeds of creativity and artistry in young people.
Singing in chorus is a community building activity that enables youthful participants to increase their confidence and ability to work as team members, while also improving behavioral and academic achievements. Chorus is the most accessible branch of the performing arts requiring little special equipment. Music proves time and time again that it is able to cross cultural boundaries and bridge ethnic divides – truly the universal language. It is also fun!
The continued erosion of music in our schools due to lack of funding and focus on the arts creates a need for community-based chorus programs. CCP has been created to right this wrong, to act as an advocate for the arts and to create opportunities for young people to learn to sing, and to learn to sing together, regardless of income or ethnicity.
CCP is working on modeling a youth chorus program that can be diverse and of the highest musical and educational quality. It’s collaboration with the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill will help to ensure musical excellence, while working to create opportunity to spread the model regionally and further afield. The Summer Musical Theatre and Voice Workshop 2011 is the first step on this road.
Lauren Bromley Hodge is the founder and Director of Community Chorus Project. Most recently she created the Youth Performing Arts Conservatory at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro, NC – an acting program that served 120 young people offering participants a professional theatre experience. Lauren was also the Director of Development at the ArtsCenter, Carrboro after having spent many years in London and New York City at an executive level in the entertainment industry.