Presenting Mana Maoli’s Music Academy and Mobile Studio!!

Welina!

Cheeeehuuu, we’ve got AWESOME news to share!! Makahiki season blessings….Mana Maoli has just begun a project that includes:

  1. Building Hawaii’s first ever solar powered, community co-op Mobile Studio, with audio and video production capabilities.

  2. Creating and piloting curriculum toward Hawaii’s first Music and Multimedia Academy, where graduates will earn their high school diploma, are college and career ready and culturally grounded.

Music Studio with Mural Trailer w mural 2We are partnering with 808 Urban youth artists to paint a mural on our mobile studio!  We superimposed a couple of their murals on  our trailer to help us all visualize … ideas anyone, on what might be painted on our mobile studio walls?

ABOUT THE MANA MELE PROJECT:

This opportunity to better serve our ‘opio (youth), while also providing innovative ways for Mana Maoli and its partner schools and artists to generate our own revenues, is now a reality thanks to hundreds of artists’ and supporters’ contributions over many years of fundraising, and a recently awarded ANA grant (Administration for Native Americans).

The Academy and Mobile Studio are both unprecedented and a long time coming, as part of Mana Maoli, Halau Ku Mana and other partners’ vision for over a dozen years. They comprise 2 of 3 components of our ‘Mana Mele’ project. The 3rd component is Community mentorships, which will bring our academy and mobile studio to life by connecting our ‘opio with musicians, engineers, videographers and music business professionals, in both school and real world settings.

The mobile studio will serve as a learning lab during school visits, intersession mentorships, and ultimately, at the Music and Multimedia Academy. Resulting ‘knowledge resource’ products will include archiving kupuna (elder) stories and knowledge and other student-driven creations that are digital, interactive, place and culture-based.

In addition, the mobile studio will allow us to offer Hawaii’s community at-large a new array of services and products – from providing power, sound, entertainment and recordings at live events, to studio products, such as PSA’s, commercials, promo or instructional videos, music singles, CD’s and videos, etc. This will allow schools, partner organizations, and artists the chance to generate their own revenues, while providing our ‘opio real world mentorships. Those who shop with us will not only get quality products and services, they will be supporting community, environment and culture-based education.

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We would like to send out a HUGE Mahalo to each of you who provided kokua in so many ways. Over a dozen Mana Maoli staff, volunteers and charter school directors helped put together this massive proposal, and over 60 partners signed MOA’s regarding involvement in this project, including 8 partner charter schools, the MELE program at HCC, 808 Urban, and dozens of musicians, engineers, music business professionals, and videographers. Over 600 of you filled out surveys, and over a hundred of you gave even more of your valuable time and input by phone or in person.

In our next blog, we will more properly mahalo the many individuals and organizations who have played a key role in getting us this far.  We will also be announcing job and volunteer opportunities related to this project.

 Mahalo, mahalo, mahalo mau loa!

mana maoli music