INTERNATIONAL WORK
For over fifteen years, Katie has worked with international NGOs as a workshop facilitator, lecturer, and music therapist. Her work has taken her to the Balkans, Europe, South Africa, and Ecuador, offering workshops and lectures in music improvisation, meditation and community music therapy. She continues to work closely with non-profit, educational arts organizations and diverse communities introducing music as an agent for social change, advocacy, and healing, while advocating for new ways of exploring the innate creativity that exists in all of us.
In 2006, Katie traveled to South Africa to work with the clown theatre company The Glass Contraption to work at the Topsy Center Sanctuary where children ages 2 to 20 lived. Katie brought 50 ukuleles donated by the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum to the center for all the kids and staff to have who were living there. For one month the Glass Contraption lived and worked with the kids and staff culminating in an original clown show with the kids.
In 2013, Katie returned to South Africa to work with the ICRD Group to provide a week-long experience for children and teens in song writing. Once again, thanks to the generosity of the South African Arts ministry, friends and family through Kickstarter, and the donation of 50 ukuleles by the Ukulele Hall of Fame, a beautiful week-long overnight camp was offered to 20 children to focus on music, dance, art, and clowning. The project was called Uke and Kids and resulted in an original CD entitled "The Journey" showcasing songs and stories by the kids featuring ukuleles and a host of other instruments. Click HERE to watch our video of the project's history.
In 2009, Katie offered workshops in Prishtina, Kosovo, working with the organizations Balkan Sunflowers and the Mental Rights Initiative respectively where she taught music improvisation and Sound PaintingTM to educators in Roma villages and with adults living with cognitive delays and physical challenges. In the summers of 2002 to 2005, Katie worked with Media Artes in Macedonia, formed after the war in 1996, to create opportunities for young people to delve into the arts promoting cultural tolerance, mutual understanding and freedom of expression as a means for social change.
