The FAME COMMUNITY STATEMENT | July 2022
As members of the Feierabend Association for Music Education (FAME), we believe music is for everyone. We aim to grow a tuneful, beatful, artful community of individuals who can join together through singing, dancing, and responding expressively to music.
Embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion and supporting teachers in doing the same is part of our core mission. We are also committed to identifying and removing barriers in order to create access for members of our learning community by:
- Providing scholarships for members of marginalized populations to attend certification courses and biennial FAME conferences;
- Offering accessible resources to members and non-members;
- Recruiting and compensating presenters of different cultural backgrounds for biennial conferences and webinars;
- Soliciting resource contributions from our membership community;
- Producing and promoting content aligned with our core mission and purpose; and,
- Expanding our outreach to the community by hearing “voices of the membership” through active engagement in a variety of ways including a submission process for sharing content and instructional practices.
As a part of our recent growth in learning as an organization, we determined it is necessary to provide our members clarity in language aligned with our core mission, values, and beliefs. Therefore at FAME, inclusion means we welcome, recognize and respect the different needs and gifts each person brings to our community. In working toward equity, we are actively removing barriers that exist for the members we serve and the students they represent. We recognize that the needs of our members are unique to their identity as well as the teaching and learning environment in the communities they work to enrich. We aim to provide experiences where we learn from each other, celebrate the music of the world, and gain a better understanding of various cultures and perspectives which help us grow as people.
As a board, we recognize our growth is essential to serve our members. As a result of our ongoing professional learning we have identified the following areas to shape our path forward:
- Continuing to partner with GIA Publications to review and address problematic content expeditiously;
- Building capacity of current and future boards in prioritizing the wide-range of human differences;
- Pursuing, recruiting, and retaining diversity in our membership;
- Acknowledging the need to evolve for sustainability while giving ourselves permission to engage and grow as teachers and learners;
- Seeking more diverse musical content to authentically represent the many cultures within the world of music and our membership;
- Prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion with authenticity and efficacy; and,
- Identifying and removing existing barriers, and creating pathways where all are welcome.Our commitment to the FAME community continues to be operationalized through our growth both individually and as a board. We will continue to learn, grow, and evolve to meet the needs of the membership as well as the students whose lives we touch. Through our deeper understanding of each other, our commitment to continuous improvement, community engagement, and increased membership participation we can work towards our common goal of building a tuneful, beatful, and artful community of teachers and learners.
1 Approved 7/11/22 by the Feierabend Association for Music Education Board of Directors
Original Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee Recommendations
Established 2019/ Recommendations Revised 2021 by FAME Board of Directors
It is our sincere belief that children and music educators deserve only the very best materials. When new information about the racist histories and context of some of the folk songs in the First Steps curriculum was brought to our attention, the Feierabend Association for Music Education (FAME) in collaboration with GIA Music, formed a committee to develop a set of standards for determining whether repertoire may be used with young children without being harmful, derogatory, or disrespectful. The list of DEIA Committee members and the full text of their recommendations is available here. The recommendations were accepted into practice by the FAME Board of Directors in 2019.