Program: Fiscally Sponsored

Make Music Pittsburgh

Make Music Pittsburgh’s mission is to connect all Pittsburgh community members, regardless of age, musical experience, or ability, to make and enjoy music every summer solstice, while also encouraging further participation in music-making.

Every year on June 21st, Pittsburgh neighborhoods are filled with music making opportunities. Make Music Pittsburgh aims to enhance the cultural vibrancy of every neighborhood in Pittsburgh by supporting the existing musical events, music friendly venues, and citizens interested in participatory music making opportunities. They facilitate events to play music outdoors and celebrate the joy and curiosity music can bring a community.

Make Music Pittsburgh aims to build a city where all community members are enabled to make music and feel connected and supported in their musical engagement.

Brown Mama Monologues

The Brown Mama Monologues is an annual showcase of 10 African-American mothers telling their unique stories around being a black mother in America with the purpose of redefining the American motherhood narrative to be more inclusive of the black mothering experience.

After six months of rehearsals and speaking and writing coaching our moms take the stage to vocalize their trials and triumps around topics ranging from co-parenting to adoption and mommy-guilt. Since its inception, the Brown Mama Monologues has boasted over 300 attendees per show. Audience members leave our theaters using words like “unifying”, “relatable” and “long overdue” to describe the experience of hearing a mom, like them, give voice to her most vulnerable moments.

In 2020, for the first time in three years, our show will debut outside of the Pittsburgh region as 10 moms from the DC Metro area take the stage at the Bowie Center for Performing arts to become storytellers under the Brown Mama Monologues banner.

Contact Us
Brownmamamonologues.com
brownmommys@gmail.com

District PGH

Our region faces urgent challenges which cannot be solved by any singular entity.

District PGH is a collaborative of local organizations working to accelerate neighborhood and district-scale sustainable development that promotes climate resilience and equity in the greater Pittsburgh region. District PGH will work with communities, professionals, and academics to research and assess, scale adoption of projects and initiatives, advocate for resources and policy, and organize convenings that forward the practice of ecodistricts in our region. Current members, including New Sun Rising, Green Building Alliance, Sustainable Pittsburgh, The Forbes Funds, and evolveEA have committed to collectively implement the following strategies:

RESEARCH

District PGH will perform assessments and provide research to make the case

that all development should be sustainable development.

 

SCALE

District PGH will provide technical assistance to increase planning initiatives

and for the implementation of sustainable developments.

 

CONVENE

District PGH will promote regional, cross sectorial partnerships and learning

between community members, academics, and professionals.

 

ADVOCATE

District PGH will increase awareness of successful models and advocate

for policy change and investments at the municipal, county, and state level. 

ReEngage Conference

ReEngage is a live conference that inspires and empowers veterans to embrace their post-military purpose, connect to resources within their communities, and take the next step towards their greatest potential. It also provides an opportunity for community members to connect to the veterans around them and better understand their journeys.

The inaugural conference will take place on Saturday, March 7, 2020 at the Heinz History Center in the Strip District. There will be interactive breakout sessions, dynamic panel discussions, and motivational keynote speakers, including Pittsburgh Steelers legend and Vietnam war veteran, Rocky Bleier.

ReEngage is honored to partner with the following organizations for the 2020 conference: Veterans Breakfast Club, The Mission Continues, Veterans Leadership Program, Pittsburgh Hires Veterans, Operation Homefront, Adventures in Training with a Purpose, The Vet Center, Robert Morris University’s Center for Veterans and Military Families, and Duquesne University’s Office for Military and Veteran Students.

NOMA PGH

Our Project Pipeline Programming is designed to provide educational and mentoring opportunities for minority students as they matriculate through grade school, college, and the process of becoming licensed architects upon graduation.

We currently facilitate education programs for youth in Middle & High School through our annual architecture camp and design workshops. Providing students with exposure to architecture at a young age gives each child an opportunity to discover their artistic and technical passions early in their educational development. Students, parents, teachers, and counselors can then place students in classes that will build on the student’s interest in architecture and design.

As our older students enter college, we provide mentoring opportunities, portfolio reviews, and job shadowing experiences to give students a chance to walk a day in the shoes of an architect. We also encourage college students to join or even start a local NOMAS student chapter at their respective colleges and universities.

After college, we support emerging professionals through the Architectural Registration Exams by providing access to study materials, mentoring and study cohort groups. Our Licensed professionals have the opportunity to serve as mentors, grow as business owners and become key players at some of Pittsburgh’s most respected architecture firms.

Vigilance Theater Group

Vigilance is an immersive theater group dedicated to creating intimate, experiential productions. Drawing inspiration from high art and pop culture alike, Vigilance is determined to explore the boundaries and possibilities of the growing immersive theater movement.

Currently, Vigilance is preparing the second-play in a three-play series, “The Moon Phase,” about power and memory in a world overseen by guardian spirits. The first show, “Hollow Moon,” had a sold-out run in November of 2018; in it, twelve strangers gathered in a historic (and possibly haunted) house for a deadly game. In “Welcome to Moonside,” which will premiere in August, a group of chosen humans are called to the otherworldly place filled with conflicted spirits, to try and save the ghosts from a grim fate.

All of Vigilance’s productions put the audience at the center of the action, treating our patrons as characters in the show. Our audiences don’t merely observe the events around them; they have the chance to interact, explore and even change the outcome of each show. It’s our goal to provide an experience that’s equal parts theatrical and interactive.

PGH Map Lab

PGH Map Lab is a social enterprise that empowers neighborhoods, non-profits, and municipalities to make data-driven decisions through the creation of maps, apps, and storytelling tools. We are motivated by healthy, equitable, resilient communities. It is our belief that a holistic approach to community development starts with good planning, which requires the best data possible. Our interest is to help organizations and municipalities find, use, and analyze this data to make better informed decisions.

PGH Map Lab is dedicated to enhancing the GIS capacity of individuals and organizations for the benefit of the greater good. Our vision of the Map Lab is an accessible, hand on learning space to test out innovative geospatial and data technologies. We will connect social justice, art, environment, and land use planning through the use of maps. It is our hope that these unique applications will provide clear communication and positively impacting local communities.

Melanin Mommies

Melanin Mommies Pgh, Inc is an organization that centers historically marginalized African American, pregnant or parenting mothers. Our goal is to assist these mothers to address and overcome intergenerational trauma and combat negative family cycles through connection to resources, mental health advocacy and mentorship.

Beauty in Brokenness

Beauty in Brokenness is a peer mentoring program that gives women the tools to create a safe space that will allow them to address life issues such as self-care, relationships, and an intentional spiritual journey beyond self.

Through a community-centered support system focused on teaching preventive measures to help strengthen families, the program promotes healing and wholeness that targets the decline of out of home placements for children.

We Are All Related

Countering the growing divisiveness currently exploding in our world, our nation, and in our city, We Are All Related is a passionate visualization of heart strong humanity presented through photographer Andrea London’s black & white studio portraits, accompanied by the subjects’ stories told in their own voices and native languages.

We Are All Related presents compelling stories of human resilience, the shared struggles and triumphs of individuals and families; it confirms the deep connection springing from our life experiences of oppression, equity, loss and love.

“Andrea London has always been a poet of the eyes.

Her portraits of men, women, and children from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds are the very definition of intimacy. Her images loosen the floodgates of empathy and erase ‘the Other’ from our vocabulary of swirling categories.

All of these portraits are invitations to a deeper communion. They deserve the same attention great paintings warrant when you visit them in the world’s great museums.

Andrea London is a master at reminding us that we’re not doomed to be wandering souls. There’s a common humanity at play all around us if we only learn to look for it. There is no ‘Other’ because, as her portraits eloquently remind us, we are all related.”

–Tony Norman, Columnist and Book Editor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

We Are All Related is available as a gallery exhibition, a public art installation, a video, a speaker’s presentation, and a book which can be ordered at the link below.

andrealondon.com

Twitter – @AllRelatedPhoto
Instagram – @WeAreAllRelated.Photo
Facebook – WeAreAllRelated.Photo

A Letter Compiled From All Letters

A Letter Compiled From All Letters
As tools for communication shift from pencil and paper to keyboard and screen and definitions for what is actual and virtual continue to blur, the creators for A Letter Compiled From All Letters consider connection and communication in a digital age. This new, evening-length, contemporary dance work conceived of by collaborators Maree ReMalia (director/choreographer), Gigi Gatewood (multimedia artist), and Lillian Cho (performer) merges live performance and video projection. The collaborative team works with cross-disciplinary cast members David Bernabo, Joseph Hall, Moriah Ella Mason, Jil Stifel, understudy Sarah Friedlander and set designer Natalia Gomez and costume designer Emily Vallozzi.
Maree ReMalia, Gigi Gatewood, Lillian Cho & collaborators
New Hazlett Theater
June 13-15, 2019 | 8:00pm
photo credit Bill Shirley
photo credit Kitoko Chargois

Pittsburgh Personalized Learning Network

PLPGH Overview

While schools are exploring many new strategies, personalized learning is gaining traction as an integral part of a broader K-12 transformation. Educators are increasingly recognizing the urgency to change, but it is difficult for individual schools to unilaterally tackle the complex systemic change needed to move to a more student-centered and personalized model – one that’s better aligned with the rapidly shifting demands of today’s workforce.

Recognizing the need for better and deeper collaboration, progressive leaders in Southwestern Pennsylvania have joined forces to create the Pittsburgh Personalized Learning Network (PLPGH). The team includes six members of the prestigious Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools and a range of pioneering educators from across the region. PLPGH is also a partner with Remake Learning — a nationally recognized network of nearly 500 schools and organizations in SWPA that have embraced the future of teaching and learning.