“I believe in the power of music and the arts
to change perceptions, prompt empathy,
and embolden our hearts and humanity. ”
IN-KINSHIP, OPEN WATERS Collective
What possibilities emerge when we look at social repair and environmental care as public, creative acts?
The Archives & Performance Fellowship is a mulit-year collaboration with Darren Ranco, Lilah Aikins, Cory Tamler, Jennie Hann, Devon Kelley-Yurdin, and Tyler Rai that follows the tradition of Wabanaki Guiding, connecting Native and non-Native people to place through experience, language, and story, experimenting with research and performance approaches to understand stories and histories of the Penobscot River and watershed. The collective will collaborate to create new work, inspired by their learning, that addresses ecological recovery and social justice. Collective activities is led by Penobscot Nation partners and centers indigenous knowledge and experience.
Sorcha & Emilia
What began as two seasoned songwriters showing up for weekly creative check-ins evolved into a fresh musical collaboration. Emilia Dahlin and Sorcha Cribben-Merrill join their jazz vocal harmonies with the poetry of folk music, while honoring vintage rhythms and their stylistic origins. Their songs unveil mesmerizing tales, charming vignettes, and raw bluesy grooves as they swap guitars, accordion, drums, and vocal improvisations.
Joining forces on stage, they embody what is possible when two musicians support each other through challenges of “going it alone” in the work of launching new projects, sustaining creative partnerships, and aligning their values with their work. Fueled by their Wednesday morning “creative accountability sessions,” removing barriers to their creative process made space for this special duo.
Love Lab Studio Songwriting
Over the past five years Emilia has been a visiting artist at Love Lab Studio, a children’s art studio in Portland Maine and one of her favorite places. Owned and run by Christina Bechstein a force for good in the community who’s deeply committed to community art and social justice. Listen to the songs HERE.
MUSIC TO LIFE
In 2019, Emilia was invited to join the New England Artist Accelerator by Music To Life, built by Noel “Paul” Stookey (Peter, Paul, and Mary) and his daughter, Liz Stookey. The Accelerator amplifies the social change efforts of activist musicians, social enterprise organizations, and supporters by creating programs that measurably revitalize our communities through the power of music.
The Lullaby Project
In 2021 and 2022 Emilia participated in a partnership program between 317 Main Community Music Center and Way Finder Schools. The Lullaby Project (A Carnegie Hall program) brings together songwriters and new parents to co-write a song for their baby. It’s a beautiful project! Here are the tracks that Emilia and her partners wrote.
Thirty-five Artists, Nine Countries, One Vision
In 2009, Emilia Dahlin and collaborator, Dib Bicknell founded The Transcendence Project, a vision born of Emilia and Deb’s experiences and convictions in the power of music to build community and give people the power to transcend their physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional limitations.
The following year, Emilia and Deb were invited by Seeds of Peace International Camp in Maine to the 2012 Educator's Course, "Expressive Arts; Educational Transformations," to facilitate and produce a culminating, public performance, We Make The Road By Walking.
Artists, musicians, and educators from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus, the USA, India, and Pakistan who actively resist the status quo to create something rare, hopeful and beautiful together came together at Seeds Of Peace. Participants engaged in dialogue and conflict with one another; they met the challenges of everyday life; they expressed themselves through the arts and stretched to understand one another, while focusing on themes of home, conflict, upheaval, displacement, migration, suffering, loss and love.
A text was developed and edited by the group. This text was then woven into a single narrative and performed, along with music and choreographed movements, at the Portland Stage Company in Portland, Maine. The process and performance took place over the course of only ten days.
Two years later, a grant funded the recording and compilation of the songs (We Make The Road By Walking) to accompany the print resource for peace workers using the arts as their medium.