Archive for the ‘Personal Performance’ Category
Personal concerts streamed to hospitalized kids
Posted: February 8, 2012 at 5:22 am
Melodic Caring Project
Braydon Hutchison, 11, and Melodic Caring Project founder Levi Ware jam at the Ronald McDonald House in Seattle. (Photo: Melodic Caring Project)
By Monica Guzman
GeekWire
On Friday, Dec. 2 at Seattle Children’s Hospital, 11-year-old Braydon Hutchison was crying. It wasn’t because of his leukemia, which kept him quarantined, or the nausea and vomiting that had made him sick all day. A musician he’d never met was playing a concert across town in his honor, calling out his name to the crowd. Braydon could see the live stream on his laptop from his hospital bed, and it finally moved him to tears.
It was the best thing that ever happened to him in the hospital, Braydon said later. “It made me feel really good.”
The musician was local artist Levi Ware. The concert was the work of the Melodic Caring Project, a nonprofit startup Ware and his wife, Stephanie, founded last year with the mission of using music and technology to help kids heal.
“I’ve always felt music was for more than entertaining,” said Ware, 35. “Now, finally, with this coming together, it’s like, ‘Wow — this is really our purpose.’”
The idea for Melodic Caring Project grew out of an August 2010 benefit concert Ware and other artists performed in Mount Vernon, Wash., for Kaydee Curbow, a then-11-year-old girl who was battling leukemia. Treatment for the disease can leave the immune system susceptible to infection. So Kaydee, a student of an elementary-school teacher who is one of Ware’s friends, could not leave the hospital.
“We thought, ‘It’s great to do this in Mount Vernon, but we want her to know people care, so how can we make her a part of it?’” Ware said.
Ware set up a camera at the venue and told Kaydee’s family how to access the concert via UStream. She and her mother, Patti, watched from her hospital room as people she’d never met came together in her honor.
“We called her afterward, and she was so happy,” Ware said. “That’s how Melodic Care Project was born.”
The Wares put on three more shows for Kaydee, including an emotional homecoming concert, that helped her family raise more than $5,000 for medical expenses.
At the end of the year, Levi and Stephanie made a big decision. Levi quit his day job in construction, and Stephanie quit hers in accounting, so the couple could devote themselves full- time to cultivating an idea they said already feels bigger than they are. They’re starting small, but with partnerships with the Seattle Living Room Shows and the Fremont Abbey Arts Center about to kick off, they’re looking forward to helping more and bigger acts break hospitalized kids’ isolation and give them a meaningful experience.
“The staff, the nurses would come in and and watch it and say, ‘How cool that they’re doing this for you,’” Patti Curbow, Kaydee’s mom, said about her daughter’s streamed concerts. “I hope (Levi Ware) does really well with this, just because of how it’s made us feel. You can tell his heart is totally into it. He wants to help people. He wants to make the crazy go away for a while.”
The Wares want to keep their service free to patients, and free to the hospital. So to make the project sustainable, they know, they have some work to do. Most costs so far they’ve paid out of pocket, and the Dec. 2 concert — the project’s first after the Wares’ shows for Kaydee — relied on a volunteer cameraman who used his own equipment.
Their first step is to launch an online community fundraising campaign on Kickstarter or PledgeMusic in the coming weeks. Also on the to-do list: apply for grants, scout for corporate sponsorships and host fundraisers for the nonprofit. The first fundraiser, a combination benefit that will double as a live streamed show to hospitalized kids, is scheduled for March 29.
The Wares have met one early goal to collaborate with local performance series so visiting artists can easily plug in with kids as they play. Another is to partner with hospitals that can connect artists with patients.
To set up the Dec. 2 show at Seattle Children’s, the Wares approached David Knott, the hospital’s resident music therapist. Intrigued by the idea, Knott introduced the Wares to three young patients — including Braydon — whom he’d deemed to be “music identified,” meaning that they respond to music in ways that help them deal with pain.
When the patients’ families agreed to take part in the concert, they were told the appointed time to tune their laptops or tablets to the project’s UStream channel for the show. Ware, who was performing live at the non-profit Q Cafe in Seattle, told the crowd that night that the concert was dedicated to three special fans at Seattle Children’s.
He referenced the kids by name throughout his set while Stephanie chatted with them and their families on UStream, occasionally stepping up to the mic to share a comment or question. One of the children, the Wares later learned, could not participate due to last-minute treatment. The other, a little girl, spent part of the concert dancing with her nurses.
Renae Knowles, Braydon’s mom, watched with her son in his hospital room. Braydon had played guitar on and off for four years. He’s been practicing daily in his new room at Seattle Ronald McDonald House since the concert, Knowles said.
“Once we streamed in, it took his mind off the bad stuff that was going on, how (Ware) called his name several times and called them rock stars,” she said. “It touched his soul that strangers would be willing to do this for someone they didn’t know.”
See GeekWire.com for more on this story.
Monica Guzmanis a community strategist in startups and media and a digital life columnist for GeekWire. You can find her tweeting away at @moniguzman, subscribe to her public Facebook posts at facebook.com/moniguzman or reach her via email.
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New Personal Trainer Job Site Helps Personal Fitness Trainers Find Local Jobs and Online Education
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New Personal Trainer Job Site Helps Personal Fitness Trainers Find Local Jobs and Online Education
Personal trainers and aspiring personal trainers can now find job listings online at http://www.personal-trainer-job.com/. The site also offers information on fitness career training.
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, February 05, 2012 --(PR.com)-- Whether a person is looking to be a celebrity personal trainer, a personal fitness trainer for a local sports team or a boot camp personal trainer, a new Personal Trainer Jobs site at http://www.personal-trainer-job.com/ provides links, listings, certification and information on all things personal training.
With an extensive personal trainer jobs directory, the new website offers links to a variety of fitness career options, including health club jobs, independent contractor positions and even online personal training options.
In addition, Personal Trainer Jobs includes information on personal trainer education and certification with the National Exercise & Sports Trainers Association (NESTA) Personal Trainer certification, a four-year accredited certification, where most are only two years. The NESTA online training is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), and it also incorporates business methods and information on running a successful personal training business.
“Regardless of how, where and when you want to work and develop your career in the fitness industry, this site has something for you,” said John Spencer Ellis, founder of John Spencer Ellis Enterprises, a fitness and personal development solutions company, and the personal trainer jobs site. “As part of the growing fitness field, personal trainer jobs are plentiful when you know where to look, and what’s where we come in.”
In addition the website offers information on personal training career opportunities with Adventure Boot Camp, Intense Mixed Performance Accelerated Cross Training (IMPACT), mixed martial arts conditioning, group personal training, nutrition coaching and athletic coaching. Personal Trainer Jobs also includes information on Wexford University, which offers associate through doctorate degrees in health, fitness, nutrition and applied sports psychology in an accelerated online format.
“As a personal trainer, you have the opportunity to change your life and your clients’ lives, which is a pretty amazing thing,” Ellis added. “We wanted to simplify the process of finding personal training careers and education with this new website.”
About John Spencer Ellis Enterprises and Personal Training Jobs
John Spencer Ellis Enterprises is a solutions provider for fitness and coaching professionals around the world, providing education, turn-key business programs, coaching and resources for new and advanced fitness and coaching professionals. For more information about John Spencer Ellis Enterprises or personal training jobs and certifications, please visit http://www.personal-trainer-job.com/
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Making the arts Personal
Posted: February 5, 2012 at 9:46 am
Walk into Bryant Whelan’s office at the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural and Arts Center, and you know she is an avid collector of art, especially folk arts.
There are face jugs, primitive works, a small Choctaw basket she acquired during a trip to Jackson, a pine needle basket with colorful yarn.
“And this is a handmade book,” she said, picking up the volume and opening its clay cover, revealing pale green pages inside. “The paper is handmade, too.”
In fact, handmade is what especially draws Whelan to a work.
“I love handmade paper and jewelry. I make jewelry myself, and I paint, and I’ve always been supportive of local artists,” she said.
A mixed assemblage angel hangs on the wall near her desk. Like many works in Whelan’s office, the angel has a story.
“I saw one of her works and said, ‘This is spiritually speaking to me.’ I wanted to meet Provie Musso, who did it, but somebody said she had just left. After that, I would go around asking people, ‘Do you know Provie Musso?’ I finally did meet her, and we became fast friends. Now, I’m planning for her to do a workshop here,” she said. “She’ll bring in wood, found objects and metal, and people will get to pound and paint and come back with a wonderful piece of their own.”
Whelan’s plan to bring the Daphne, Ala., artist to do a workshop at the Mary C. is a tangible example of what the center’s new executive director has in store for the community, the Coast and area visitors: personalizing art -- all kinds of art -- making it accessible and multidimensional to all.
“I just started the third of January, so I’m still getting my feet wet,” she said. “I’m getting more acquainted with what’s working and what needs attention.”
One of the first goals is building membership, Whelan said.
“We have a great base membership and fantastic volunteers, but we need more,” she said. Whelan sees opportunities for a variety of needs to be met through resources at the center.
“This morning, a woman and her son came in. She has been in physical rehab, and she was interested in working with clay; she thought it would be good therapy for her hands. She’s in her 70s, and she wants to take clay courses,” she said.
Whelan, a Mobile native, has lived in several places, including Atlanta, Nashville and Edinburgh, Scotland, and has more than 20 years of experience in marketing and the arts. She came to the Mary C. already aware of what Ocean Springs has to offer.
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