Ascend Through Music

Pulse Mentorship Initiative

Ascend through Music’s Pulse initiative gives youth an opportunity to connect with volunteer artists with expertise in the creative field of their interest, including singing, songwriting, playing instruments, producing instrumental beats, and others. The students meet weekly either in person, or virtually, one-on-one, with their volunteer mentors to work collaboratively on exploring and improving their chosen craft and prepare a performance piece for a student showcase. The initiative provides individualized attention to the students and helps them explore how others have incorporated music into their lives.

Beatzone

BeatZone is a 12-week co-ed after school music program based at multiple DC public schools. BeatZone meets twice per week, focusing on developing students’ music production and songwriting skills. Students have the opportunity to create an original song track, lyrics, and a music video as a group, selecting a positive topic and going through the creative process from start to finish. Currently, BeatZone is hosted at Eastern High School, Eliot Hine Middle School, and online.

Queen Beez

Queen Beez is based out of Living Classrooms’ Dent House community center and uses the transformative power of music to empower teen and pre-teen girls to develop confidence and leadership skills in a positive and constructive environment. The program uses music as a vehicle to build self-esteem and public speaking skills, engage students in learning, inspire creativity, encourage personal expression, and address and/or solve issues faced by young girls. Female mentors and music professionals work with the young women to produce music, write lyrics, engineer recording sessions, mix and edit music, shoot and edit video, and perform both in and outside of the studio. Living Classrooms plans the curricula and topics for the Queen Beez program to be timely and relevant to the issues faced by participants, including peer pressure, bullying, domestic violence, climate change, drug and alcohol use, mental health, and racism.

The program exposes young ladies to a professional field that is often dominated by men and gives them the confidence to become leaders and role models and understand that they have the voice to advocate for themselves and for their community.