Launched by CCV in late 2020 in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, World Culture in Context (WCC) takes students on a virtual field trip by connecting them with community tradition-bearers from across the globe. Students can visit with a roster of artists from Tuva to South Korea to Columbia to Ethiopia and beyond.
As pictured above, a Zoom recording of a WCC program captures Melaku Belay—a world-renowned Ethiopian dancer known as the “walking Earthquake” for his full-body movements—sharing various traditional Ethiopian dance styles and music with students in a Baltimore Public School classroom.
During the 2021/2022 school year, WCC introduced artists from all over the world to over 1,200 students at more than 50 different schools throughout the United States.
In 2022 WCC has grown in new exciting ways with the development of custom curriculum designed for each participating artist as well as the return of face to face school visits. We recorded new programs around Jewish music and food, Hawaiian indigenous instruments, and on the impact of the Hawaiian steel guitar on the world.
New Avenues for Learning
This program continues to offer avenues of access to young audiences we didn’t think possible only years ago. For a taste, give a few minutes to this short clip. Here, students from the Eastern Shore of Virginia wrote lyrics mined from stories connected to their own families. The great bluesman Jontavious Willis, hearing the lyrics for the first time takes key phrases and improvises a blues song:
Book your World Culture in Context Event now
We are starting to schedule our 2023 season. For more information about this special program, including how to bring it to a particular school reach out to info@culturalvibrancy.org
