For the whole congregation
Singing for Resistance & Resilience
90 minutes
A fully participatory workshop designed to build skills and confidence for leading music in worship and gathering the community in song. We’ll share best practices for invitational leadership and gentle encouragement to singing. We’ll also expand your repertoire for singing without accompaniment. Join us for an experience of leading and following, rhythm and words, and the sound of a community in harmony together.
Drumming & Spirituality
90 minutes
A chance for people of all skill levels to participate in hands on rhythm-making. We’ll tour instruments from around the world and experience the connection of community drumming through activities, stories, and discussions. We’ll also look at how rhythm and music intersect with Unitarian Universalist values. Bring your own drum if you have one- for those who don't, enough will provided.
Mobilizing Congregations for Justice
90 minutes
A training to teach, model, and practice 3 central tools for community organizing that can be used to build a more loving and powerful justice-centered community. In many congregations activists struggle to for justice work to be owned by the whole congregation, rather than a select few. Matt offers specific tools of community organizing, translated for the context of a congregational setting, to create broad buy-in and take effective action.
For Choirs & Worship Leaders
Rhythm for Choir Masterclass
90 minutes
We'll explore the theories and practices of West African, South Indian and European perspectives on rhythm. Using song, body percussion, and a few instruments to help us out, we'll dive into odd time signatures, syncopation, and polyrhythms through the lens of what different world traditions have to teach us about the role of rhythm.
Moving Music Forward: A TRaining for Worship Leaders
3 hours
A training for choir members, ministers, lay worship leaders, and musicians to dive into the theory and specific techniques for creating a transformative music experience. We'll lift up best practices for introducing new music, setting the context and tone of worship, and repurpose the role of musicians and choir members.
Singing the Generations: A History of UU Singing
90 minutes
Our history as Unitarian Universalists is full of innovations, controversies, and sometimes missed opportunities for community singing. We’ll journey from Puritan call-and-response, to the earliest hymns, to the controversial formation of choirs, and the heretical introduction of instruments. Together, we’ll sing our way through centuries of change and arrive at a new perspective on the present.