2010
Songwriting Works™ Educational Foundation receives the 2010 Rosalinde Gilbert Innovations in Alzheimer's Disease Caregiving Legacy Award from the Arthur and Rosalinde Gilbert Foundation in conjuction with the Family Caregiver Alliance.
Songwriting Works receives the Washington Health Foundation's Rural Health Initiative grant to complete year two of SW's facilitator training and create music-for-wellness tools for older adults and families on the rural Olympic Peninsula.
Judith-Kate Friedman presents on Songwriting Works research and "best practice" model at the American Society on Aging's National Forum on Brain Health, at the Aging in America Conference, Chicago IL, March 17, 2010.
2009
Songwriting Works in conjunction with Arts NorthWest and the Olympic Area Agency on Aging received on of the nation's first Creativity and Aging in America grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to replicate its songwriting program with older adults on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula and launch a facilitator certification program.
A celebration concert of songs composed during the 2009 SWOP project was held November 11, 2009. Read the story in the Peninsula Daily News. Performers included four songwriters training as SW facilitators: Keeth Monta Apgar, Paula Lalish, Matt Sircely, and Anke Summerhill with project director Judith-Kate Friedman, guest artists Laurence Cole & PT Songlines Choir, Daniel Deardorff and project participants.
2008
Dr. Theresa Allison M.D, M.Music published results of her study of Songwriting Works in the Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology (Oxford University Press).
Songwriting Works Founding Director Judith-Kate Friedman and Rabbi Sheldon Marder
and Mark Friedlander, Chaplain and Director of Resident Programs respectively at the Jewish Home San Francisco, receive the 2008 Blair L. Sadler/Society for the Arts in Healthcare International Healing Arts Award for Songwriting Works at the Jewish Home.
August 2007
Judith-Kate Friedman facilitates a series of Songwriting Works™ workshops at four Port Townsend retirement residences as guest artist with Arts to Elders, a new Jefferson-county based non-profit.
Spring/Summer 2007
Songwriting Works received the MetLife Foundation/American Society on
Aging MindAlert Award in March 2007. Founding Director Judith-Kate
Friedman accepted the award at the American Society on Aging/National Council on the Aging joint conference and joins the MindAlert training faculty.
In June, partnering health , arts, and life-long learning organizations in
Atlanta, Chicago , Minneapolis, and Los Angeles won MindAlerts grants to
bring Ms. Friedman in to demonstrate the Songwriting Works™ process with
older adults and to work hands-on with caregivers and artist facilitators. For
info on the MindAlert training click here.
February 2007
Judith-Kate Friedman celebrates 10 years of Songwriting Works artist-inresidency
programs at the Jewish Home San Francisco.
Winter 2006
Nathan Friedkin’s documentary "A 'Specially Wonderful Affair," featuring Singers & Songwriters of the Jewish Home, average age 87, and
Songwriting Works’ founding director Judith-Kate Friedman, received Best
Music Video of the Year, 3rd place honors from the international Just Plain Folks awards.
Summer 2006
Founding Director Judith-Kate Friedman demonstrates Songwriting Works
with researches and experts on Creativy and Aging at the first Symopsium
and Think Tank on Creativity and Dementia, Center on Age and Community,
University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee. Proceedings and Findings of the Think
Tank are documented in the Symposium White Paper.
April 2006
Songwriting Works moves from the San Francisco Bay Area to Port
Townsend, WA
April 2005
West Coast composers performed settings of peace poems by Zen artist and
author Kazuaki Tanahashi for a
standing-room-only audience at Berkeley’s renowned Freight & Salvage in April 2005.
The concert, which benefited Tanahashi’s non-profit organization
“A World
Without Armies: the Costa Rica Initiative” was a genre-bending evening of
folk, gospel, baroque, avante garde and funk performed by internationally acclaimed
artists ranging in age from their mid-20’s to mid-70’s. Performers included Robert Kyr and Shira Kammen, Betsy Rose, Bodhi and Joyus’ Rhythm Matrix, Edie Hartshorne and the Foxglove Trio, Judith-Kate Friedman, Evelie Delfino Såles Posch and M.C. Wes “Scoop” Nisker.
April 2005 continued:
Tanahashi, Hartshorne and Friedman then reprised the concert with Central
American musicians and educators at an international 60th anniversary
celebration of the signing
of the United Nations charter at UPAZ (University
of Peace) in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica.
A live concert CD “Imagining Peace” was released in April 2006.
Songwriting Works’ founding director Judith-Kate Friedman served as producer of both
the concerts and recording.
For concert photos visit the Songs/Gallery.