Songwriting Works Educational Foundation

Now celebrating 34 years of continuous service to community, Songwriting Works™ restores joy, hope, vitality, and community through story and song. We offer research-proven life-affirming music and myth immersion experiences for 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. 

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 that music and the arts bring everyone to life. Compassion and empathy are central in our work which has real, tangible, therapeutic results. 

However, our focus is on invention rather than intervention, composition rather than prescription, and building new social and neural pathways through cultural celebration and collaboration.  Our programs transform isolation into connection, dissolve stigmas through songs of our own making, restore a deep sense of belonging, liberate minds, hearts, imagination and possibility for participants, their communities, and empower those who co-write, hear and share the music.  Since 2022, Community StoryCircles combining mythtelling, music, and "feeding the story" with one another, have became part of our wider work.
Mythsinger Legacy Project

In all these and in our training and consulting for organizations, educators, elder care stewards and community changemakers, SW's principles, Oral Tradition practices, and emerging scientific wisdom blend. 

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 build upon the proven significant health and social benefits from our method of community engagement through songwriting which researcher Lin-Chiat Chang of San Francisco found in her National Endowment for the Arts/Artworks study of Songwriting Works. 

This 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 for four months in 2019. 
Trained as facilitators by SW founder Judith-Kate Friedman, they blended their own artistry with SW's 8 Principles of Creative Engagement methodology and principles of Vital Involvement best practices, guided by Helen Q. Kivnick and Linda Duncan of AWVIA - The Arts, Wellness and Vital Involvement in Aging.  
Songs created were as diverse as the artists and elders who collaborated: Folk, Rap/Hip Hop, Country, America, Pop songs reflected the love, humor, and history of each group and their region of the country.  [Lin-Chiat Chang PhD's research paper available upon request.]

Photo l to r: Jessie Ritter (AL/FL), Hogan and Moss (TX), Krista Detor (IN) 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, SW brought its methodology online in two successful pilot initiatives:  At 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 SW's approach. SW best practices then became part of the students' curriculum as they learned to engage elders living with dementia and their care partners in music-making (and sometimes dance) sessions (2020-2021). ARTS WA (WA State Arts Commission) brought Judith-Kate together with Jen Kulik of SilverKite and Arts WA's Miguel Guillen and Tamar Krames to create a directory of teaching artists serving elders in WA state. Their Communities of Care Creative Aging Initiative trained teaching artists from rural, tribal and urban communities (2021-22). 

THANK YOU for your support!

The Music 
• Participants create songs full of love, humor and history.
• Poignant, funny, surprising and "greater than the sum of their parts," participants, have called the experience: "Game-changing!" "Transformative." "Powerful." "Uplifting." "Better than pills!"
• A daughter said: "I didn't think this was possible for any of us!"
• Families are amazed. Naysayers become singers.
Here's what happened when families joined their loved ones at a memory care residence and wrote a song about surviving service in WWII: Watch on YouTube by clicking here: WWII Homecoming Song

Thank you for your support!!