Here’s a list of cool things that happened when CJ went to the American Music Therapy Association National Conference in Chicago. Listed in approximate order of importance!
- The honor of being invited by Ken Aigen to sit in the front row for the Clive Robbins tribute. This was an incredible evening which will continue to inspire CJ to follow her visionary goals in the same way Clive passionately followed his. Clive Robbins has left a deep legacy on the entire field of music therapy. Here’s one of our fav videos of Clive, it’s only 1.5 mins, and if you watch it you’ll most certainly be blessed by it.
- Chatting about Community Music Therapy with, and showing our presentation proposal (already submitted for MAR Regional conf next Spring) to Ken Aigen, Alan Turry, Rick Soshensky and David Marcus, who are all pioneers in the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy approach.
- Raising awareness for the Neurodiversity Movement with music therapists (MTs) from all over the country, as well as sharing our work of SensoryFriendly Concerts. CJ had a consulation meeting with the wonderful Morgan May Sparks, of Rhythm Garden Music. We’re so excited about the possibility of Morgan becoming a Facilitating Music Therapist of SensoryFriendly Concerts in the Terre Haute, Indianapolis area!
- Connecting with our wonderful, longtime friends, Rachel Rambach, Kimberly Sena Moore and Michelle Erfurt. Since CJ is a member of Music Therapy Pro, they offered to display our business cards and flyers at their exhibit hall booth.
- Hanging out with so many of our awesome music-therapy-blogger-friends. Bonnie Hayhurst from The Groovy Garfoose, Carly Litvik of Music with Carly, Meryl Brown of Developing Melodies, JoAnn Jordan of Music Sparks, Natalie Mullis of Key Changes MT , Faith Halverson-Ramos of Soundwell Music, Amy Kalas of Wholesome Harmonies MT, Natasha Thomas of Music Moves, Matt Logan of Music Therapy Source, Jamie George and Andrew Littlefield of The George Center, Meganne Masko of Comtemplative Music Therapist…. Remember how our last blog post was for MTs to learn more about who’s-who in Neurodiversity, well, we’d now like to tell our Neurodiversity friends that if you want to follow some music therapist bloggers on twitter and FB, who will genuinely interact with you (along with Rachel, Michelle, Kimberly, Janice and MJ, who are hyperlinked in other bullets), these are the folks to follow.
- Being a special guest on two podcasts during the conference, The Music Therapy Show with Janice Lindstrom, and Music Therapy Round Table, both live-streamed from the exhibit hall.
- Making sure our friends Michelle and Michael, co-founders of Terra Rising Records, met in-person with all of our mutual twitter and FB friends. Since Terra Rising Records is just on the other side of DC from us, we’ve gotten a chance to meet with them several times and also brainstorm some collaboration opportunities. It was fun introducing them to other MTs and vouch for the fact that their upcoming documentary on music therapy is going to be awesome.
- Going for a morning run with our #Runnecessary twitter pals, 3 of whom were AMTA12 heroes, Michelle Kennemer, Andrew Knight, (who ran the Chicago Marathon the weekend before conference started, and raised $3338 for AMTA!) and the amazing Becky Wellman, marathon runner and AMTA12 conf organizer extraordinaire!
- Finally meeting in person some of CJ’s fellow committee members from the Online Conference for Music Therapy, which happened this past February 2012. This project required that they put their creative minds together, completely through cyberspace, to successfully pull off a 24 hour worldwide conference. These are some of the music therapy rock stars who CJ got to serve on the OCMT planning committee with: Janice Lindstrom, Anita Gadberry, Becky Wellman, Aksana Kavaliova-Moussi and MJ Landaker. With so much distance and “virtual” effort between them all, it was certainly awesome to finally meet in person!
- A brief, yet inspiring, conversation with Petra Kern about the exciting future of Imagine: Early Childhood Music Therapy Online Magazine, which inspired an interest in submitting a podcast of our work in SensoryFriendly Concerts.
- Meeting up with our awesome new friend, Henny. Just remember that name.
- Okay nevermind, these aren’t so much in order of importance, because our last bullet point is a huge thankful shoutout to our dear friend, Maria Battista Hancock, music therapy director of the Hochstein School in Rochester NY. Maria and CJ not only met in PA and made a fun road trip together to Illinois, but they were also those infamous roomies who brought the espresso machine with them! Those of you who followed #AMTA12 on twitter and got word there were free lattes on the 9th floor, you know exactly what we’re talking about. 😉
Yes what an incredible time of inspiration #AMTA12 – energy and passion to spread throughout the country and the globe. Great to room with you and mmmh mmmh that ESPRESSO!!! Sending #MusicTherapyLove to you CJ and all those beautiful souls who reach out by riching within through music!