Our Mission
Our mission is to connect young people from city and suburban schools and use music as a common language to celebrate their shared humanity.
We engage students in collaborative music and video projects that reflect their diverse identities.
We help young people shift perspectives on the world and their place in it through exposure to peers from different communities.
We produce professional quality music, video and live performances in partnership with the top studios and industry professionals in Philly to amplify our students’ voices.
Our Mission
Our mission is to connect young people from city and suburban schools and use music as a common language to celebrate their shared humanity.
We engage students in collaborative music and video projects that reflect their diverse identities.
We help young people shift perspectives on the world and their place in it through exposure to peers from different communities.
We produce professional quality music, video and live performances in partnership with the top studios and industry professionals in Philly to amplify our students’ voices.
What’s Happening Now?
We are expanding our reach! We’ve been able to expand from working with 2 schools to working with students from 10 schools and there are enough schools on a waiting list that we hope to grow to offer programming at 20 schools by the start of the 26-27 school year. In a recent survey over 90% of alumni reported that their collab caused them to see the world and their place in it differently. Also over 90% reported that they’ve formed friendships with people from a different community than their own. That’s huge. We’re inspired thinking about the impact we will make as we scale up and reach more students.
Our First Collab: “Hope”
Visual Album – “Flowers”
Vans Footwear Commercial
Our Impact on the Community…
Developing Allies
We believe that if young people can develop strong positive racial identities they will be better able to interrupt cycles of racism. White people will become more effective allies and People of Color will combat internalized oppression and develop skills to lead mixed-race groups.
Unlearning Biases
We believe that when young people spend time collaborating with people outside of their own Racial/Ethnic/Cultural group they can begin to unlearn biases they’ve often unknowingly developed. If we can decrease the implicit bias in young people they grow up to be more inclusive, equitable, and aware adults.
Courageous Conversations
We give young people a public voice in these conversations through our music/video content. Most of the dialogue around race is dominated by adults and we believe that the voice of our youth should be included in the conversation.
Professional Skills Development
Our students are developing real-world job skills in production, project management, and session facilitation, in addition to songwriting, performance, and recording. Our hope is that by developing a strong core of student leaders we can expand our reach in the first three areas.
Featured on 6ABC.com
The Philly Sound Exchange pairs music with social justice terms for highschoolers as reported during Action News at 5:30 on September 14, 2020
