Songwriting Works Educational Foundation

In January 2025, Songwriting Works™ will celebrate 35 years serving community and restoring joy, hope, vitality, and community through story and song. Our research-proven life-affirming music and myth immersion experiences bring meaning and healing to those in greatest need. Elders, youth, and families diverse in cultural roots and economic situations across the spectra of physical, cognitive/neuro and emotional/mental capacities join together hear each others' truths and co-write and perform original music.

Our approach is guided by Songwriting Works' 8 Principles of Creative Engagement: access, inclusion, originality, authenticity, respect, reciprocity, restoration and celebration. As professional artists we know music and arts bring everyone to life. Compassion and empathy are central. We've seen real, tangible, therapeutic results from our work, yet our focus is creative: We invent rather than intervene, compose rather than prescribe, and build new social and neural pathways through cultural celebration and collaboration.  Our programs transform isolation into connection, dissolve stigmas through creative exchange, and provide a deep sense of belonging.  We liberate minds, hearts, and possibilities for participants, communities, and empower all who hear, and share, the music. Our programs, trainings and consulting for organizations, educators, elder care stewards and community changemakers, blend our principles, Oral Tradition practices, and emergent scientific wisdom. Joy, poignancy and expansive creativity dance as we give voice to our truths and honor each other, our lineages, communities, and the precious earth that has supported all our peoples for generations.  

Songwriting Works' vision is to train songwriter-facilitators in each state and territory of the U.S. It's time to bring our method of community building through songwriting across the nation and expand upon researcher Lin-Chiat Chang PhD's National Endowment for the Arts/Artworks study of Songwriting Works paired with Vital Involvement best practices, guided by Helen Q. Kivnick and Linda Duncan of AWVIA - The Arts, Wellness and Vital Involvement in Aging.  That study brought older adults residing in low-income, HUD subsidized senior housing in 5 U.S. states (CT, MN, AL, TX, IN) into collaboration with songwriters Sally Rogers, Don Strong, Jessie Ritter, Jon Hogan and Maria Moss (aka Hogan and Moss) and Krista Detor [pictured] who trained with Songwriting Works' founder Judith-Kate Friedman in 2018.  Each songwriter blended their own artistry with participants'. The songs they created were as diverse as the artists and elders themselves: Their Folk, Rap/Hip Hop, Country, Americana, and Pop songs reflected their love, humor, and history personally and in their region of the country. Lin-Chiat Chang PhD's research paper is available here: www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/Research-Art-Works-AHEPA.pdf

We're glad to offer in-person programs again after several years online only. We'll be bringing back Songwriting Works' popular intergenerational community-music teams with plans to hold workshops beginning in March 2025, face to face and online. We'll also find new forms of making our trainings and methodology available online. We'll be building on the success of recent pilot projects: In 2020-21, SW brought its methodology online to the University of Cincinnati faculty Dr. Rhonna Schatz of the School of Medicine and Stefan Fiol, PhD of the Conservatory of Music trained with Judith-Kate Friedman in Songwriting Works''s approach which became part of their curriculum. Their students then brought Songwriting Works' best practices to elders living with dementia and their care partners in series of music-making (and sometimes dance) sessions.

In 2025, Judith-Kate and Songwriting Works' board member Quanita Roberson will offer workshops for teaching artists, field leaders, and advocates of Creative Aging. Our "Songs at the Center of Care" programs for families living with memory loss will be available upon request.

Thank you for your support!