https://vimeo.com/40669257]
Vivian Nix-Early spends her Tuesday afternoons sitting on a bright, blue-carpeted floor surrounded by a handful of singing 4-year-olds. And she literally does not miss a note–singing everything from the participants’ names to the books on the shelf and the thank you’s when the students put their instruments away.
Nix-Early is co-founder and chief operations officer of BuildaBridge, an arts education and intervention nonprofit, located at 205 W. Tulpehocken St. in Germantown.
The organization is a practitioner in the power of the arts, bringing hope and healing to children, families and communities. It is one of the only organizations in Philadelphia working with the homeless and abused children, along with their families, helping to give the children well-rounded experience and helping them learn how to become expressive through arts-based methods.
However, the work does not stop in Philadelphia. Over the years, the organization has built alliances internationally in places such as Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua and Kenya, carrying the same methods and ideologies with them to these foreign lands.
On this particular afternoon, Nix-Early does not need to travel very far to make a difference. She can do it right in Philadelphia. Today, she finds herself in a shelter for abused women, surrounded by a handful of 4-year-olds, whose faces light up as soon as they see her. On a bright blue carpeted floor, Nix-Early sits among the scattered toys and picture books, strumming her guitar, playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
This particular program is called the Music Competence for Young Children Project, modeled after the Music Together curriculum. The class and curriculum are based on the idea that all children are musical. Everyone is capable and can sing in tune, keep a beat and participate with confidence. Nix-Early said he hopes to create an environment that supports such learning.
She performs for this small handful of students as though she were standing on an enormous stage, performing for thousands. And they love every moment of it, signing along, dancing with her and playing the drums right next to her. They become excited while going along with the rhythm, while playing the drums, while dancing and pretending to be various animals like alligators and elephants.
Nix-Early exerts so much energy while she is working with these children, her excitement becomes contagious and eventually even the shiest student in the room participates with a few tiny strums on the guitar and some light tapping on the drums.
This type of expression becomes a release and relief to the children who have experienced so much in heir very young lives.
Nix-Early sings everything she says in the 40-minute class, not just to get her students engaged in the musical act but also because she wants them to hear a different sounding voice than the ones they might be exposed to outside of the classroom.
She provides a soothing and comforting musical learning environment, building a platform with music that will reinforce academic standards such as critical thinking, vocabulary, history, geography and mathematics. The class will also help the children develop a social and spiritual bond, building self-efficacy and resilience, as well as presenting them with life learning.
The children are kind to each other, they share, they say thank you when they are given the next instrument to play, they sing along with all of the songs, they are concerned when they sense that something is wrong with one of their fellow classmates, who today seems as though she just does not want to be involved or play.
BuildaBridge’s main focus is to engage these students in therapeutic art, as opposed to art therapy. Art therapy is the clinical approach, where goals are set between the therapist and the patient and the team strives to reach those goals together.
“When we talk about therapeutic art, which we help all of our teachers to lean, we recognize that when we are making art together, it is a healing process,” said J. Nathan Corbitt, co-founder, president and CEO of BuildaBridge.
The organization believes in art as a healing process for these children, who live in transitional housing. “Art-making has a way of touching our emotions and bypassing our defenses,” Nix-Early said.
https://vimeo.com/40895952]
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