HERE, MY VOICE
Celebrating the Power of Voice with the Hard-of-Hearing Community
An Arts in Action Event

Reception to follow.

ADMISSION:
Admission is free. Reservations required.

RSVP

DESCRIPTION:
Featuring vocal performances by hard-of-hearing participants, this event celebrates twelve weeks of intensive collaborative work of the participants of the Here, My Voice project, which responds to the challenges of hard-of-hearing people to make their voices heard and use them for creative expression. The performances will be followed by a conversation with performers and their voice teacher partners about their innovative, interdisciplinary, and transformative collaborations.

Launched in 2021 with support from USC Arts in Action, Here, My Voice is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the USC Thornton School of Music, the USC Kaufman School of Dance, the USC School of Cinematic Arts, the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and the Los Angeles Chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America. The project brought together two-person teams consisting of a hard-of-hearing participant and a voice teacher who collaborated over a three-month period to implement personalized, one-on-one voice lessons, which empowered hard-of-hearing participants to build confidence in making their voices heard through joyful self-expression, song, and spoken word. The project also included individualized movement exercises developed with USC Kaufman dance students.

Quotes from Participants:

“It feels empowering to express and let go of years of struggles, underestimation, and doubtful experiences conveyed in my voice.”

“I lost music along with my hearing. The Here, My Voice project has really given me so much of it back. It's been very freeing, and I feel more like myself than I have in a long time.”

“Here, My Voice made me break free from this once-limited perception I had of myself. I have come to accept that, although I may not sing the perfect notes every time, it’s a stamp of me that is uniquely mine.”

Faculty Mentors:
DJ Johnson, USC School of Cinematic Arts 
Beatriz Ilari, USC Thornton School of Music 
Raymond Goldsworthy, Keck School of Medicine of USC
Marientina Gotsis, USC School of Cinematic Arts 
Patrick Corbin, USC Kaufman School of Dance 

Presented by USC Arts in Action, part of Visions and Voices, in partnership with the USC School of Cinematic Arts Media Arts + Practice Division and the Los Angeles Chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America. Organized by Juri Hwang, project lead and PhD candidate, Interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice.