Our vision is to help children develop their skills of creativity and collaboration so they can build the future that they hope to see.
Mission & Vision
Kid Pan Alley’s mission is to inspire creativity, build confidence, and foster community among children of all ages through the group songwriting process. We do this through our collaborative songwriting workshops in schools, at camps, online and at community centers nationwide.
History
Kid Pan Alley started with a brilliant but obvious discovery: kids make the greatest song co-writers. Paul Reisler, songwriter, composer, master songwriting teacher and founder of Trapezoid, learned this during an elementary school songwriting residency project in rural Rappahannock County, VA. There, he co-wrote over 50 songs with all 600 children in the county. The songs were funny, touching, goofy, gross—and completely enchanting. They turned out to be so good that Reisler asked a number of the county’s professional musicians—many of them nationally and internationally known—to record one song each in their own style. The album, Tidal Wave of Song, became an expression of the whole community—and of the power of song to inspire the spirit of community.
Since that first three-week residency in 1999, Kid Pan Alley has inspired a creative tidal wave of more than 2700 original songs written and performed with over 65,000 children, from Vermont to Hawai'i. Our five studio albums feature such artists as Amy Grant, Sissy Spacek, Delbert McClinton, Kix Brooks, Cracker, The Nashville Chamber Orchestra and many others. The albums have won numerous awards including a Washington Area Music Association WAMMIE, Parents' Choice Gold and Silver honors, and a NAPPA Gold Award, as well as a Grammy nomination.
As an elementary school educator, I’m a big fan of opportunities for children to create and write in a collaborative setting. – Bill Craig, Richmond Times-Dispatch
IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access)
STATEMENT ON CULTURAL EQUITY
To support a full creative life for all, Kid Pan Alley (KPA) commits to championing policies and practices of cultural equity that foster a just, inclusive, and equitable community.
DEFINITION OF CULTURAL EQUITY
Cultural equity embodies the values, policies, and practices that ensure that all people, including but not limited to those who have been historically underrepresented based on race/ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geography, citizenship status, or religion—are represented in the development of the Kid Pan Alley policies, programs, participation, open access of opportunities for creative expression; and the fair distribution of resources.
(In adherence with Virginia Commission for the Arts.)