A New Harmony: Equity, Access, and Belonging

Read this to begin with your New Harmony Process.

Bring the new Pauli Murray Commission to your chorus for 2025-2026 Seasons!

Conversations on Faith and Religion Discussion Handout.

Transformative Community Engagement Discussion Handout

This resource includes a planning grid for choruses designed by Jane Ramseyer Miller.

Presented by Jane Ramseyer Miller, GALA Choruses Artistic Director

To be used in with the Digital Accessibility section of New Harmony Workbook Volume II.

The following guidelines should be implemented in any content platform you use: email, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Google Docs, HTML, etc. This list can be used as a quick reference whenever you are creating new content.

An introduction to Exceptionalism in its many forms

This handout invites you to consider three ways in which Exceptionalism might impact your life and work.

This handout offers 5 scenarios for choruses to consider how Exceptionalism might impact their work.

Friday, March 12 – During his first national address, President Biden stated that he would tell Americans the truth, he then immediately proceeded to spout the myth of American exceptionalism which is rooted in the lie of white supremacy.

How do we go about decolonizing ourselves and our practices without erasing ourselves entirely? Jules Orcullo discusses combatting erasure as an East Asian theatre maker through radical self-determination.

Jeffrey Sachs sits down with Rob Johnson to discuss his new book, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (Columbia University Press, 2018).

Bring the new Pauli Murray Commission to your chorus for 2025-2026 Seasons!

Founder and Artistic Director of Phoenix, Colorado’s Transgender Community Choir Sam Bullington shares reflections about chorus names, as many GALA Choruses consider name changes to reflect the expanding gender identities of their singers.

This handout offers six scenarios to consider how folks with various gender identities might experience singing with a GALA Chorus.

I have sung in one GALA chorus or another for thirty years. I have attended every GALA festival since 1989: I participated as an alto in a lesbian chorus and as an alto in a mixed chorus, then post-transition as a bass in a mixed chorus and as a baritone in a men’s chorus. Each festival I’ve attended has brought with it an experience of marginalization.

Helping a historically cisgender LGBTQ chorus to become welcoming for trans singers takes work, patience, and deep listening. Jane Ramseyer Miller shares her journey as the Artistic Director of One Voice Mixed Chorus in Minnesota.

Phoenix, Colorado’s Trans Community Choir found ourselves at the center of controversy when parental complaint around our scheduled performance of our original play, Raven’s True Self, at a local elementary school was taken up by the CBS Denver News.

Reid Vanderburgh lead this vitally important workshop during the 2013 Annual Leadership Symposium in Atlanta.

Elder choruses are on the rise in the LGBTQIA+ Choral Movement. Founder of Sage Singers in Denver, CO, Judith Nelson shares her wisdom about this growing part of GALA Choruses.

Our choruses span generations, and sometimes our different generational experiences can cause division and misunderstanding. Read on to find exercises designed to help foster community across age and experience.

A New Harmony Approach to Intergenerational Dynamics

An activity to spark intergenerational dialogue in your chorus

These five scenarios can help your chorus consider its intergenerational dynamics.

These five scenarios offer opportunities for your chorus to consider how it relates to mental health and neurodiversity.

These suggestions can assist your chorus in creating spaces that are welcoming and supportive of neurodivergent individuals. Many of these suggestions are also relevant for individuals living with mental illness.

Group norms, stated or unstated, can be powerful, and when an individual acts outside of those norms, the group may experience conflict.

This list is intended to help those involved in facilities management for their choruses determine the accessibility of a venue for rehearsal or performance.

A list of considerations for your chorus to think about Mobility Accessibility

“Heavy Breathing/ Sunset Over Lake Bde Maka Ska” a poem by Andrea Jenkins performed as part of Mni Sota Confluence! in Orchestra Hall on July 10, 2024

A list of scenarios to help your chorus consider how it works towards anti-racism

The concept of “Asia”, particularly as a cultural signifier, has always been problematic. It assumes a high degree of commonality across what is the world’s largest continent, and has been used to homogenize and “other” what is a hugely diverse swathe of people. When Proud Voices Asia, the Asian LGBT choir network was set up, one of its greatest challenges therefore lay in trying to find coherence in this variety, not just in general terms like language or social structure, but more specifically in concepts like “queer”, “choir” and “activism”, while celebrating the multiple contexts in which they exist.

Dr. Robin DiAngelo is the author of “What Does it Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy” and has been an anti-racist educator, and has heard justifications of racism by white men and women in her workshops for over two decades. This justification, which she calls “white fragility,” is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.

Bring the new Pauli Murray Commission to your chorus for 2025-2026 Seasons!

A series of scenarios for your chorus to think about various experience of sexual orientations

This discussion handout offers several scenarios that invite you to consider how different experiences of Socio-Economic Status might impact your chorus.

These sample agreements can be used to create common ground and understanding for conversations and for communities.

New Harmony Task Force members regularly have conversations with individuals, and chorus committees, who are struggling to convince chorus leaders and chorus members to embrace the important work of Equity, Access and Belonging. We’ve collected and crafted a few ideas for you to try.

The New Harmony Workbook provides a guide for choruses to explore deep conversations surrounding various identities or issues, asking: “Are we doing all we can (as individuals and as an organization) to foster equity, access, and a sense of belonging in our chorus and community?”

Many in GALA choruses see the times shifting around them. My own chorus now has a few cisgender women singing first tenor, post-transition transmen in three different sections, 6-8 straight cisgender men at any given time. At various times, we have had transwomen members, singing in various sections.