Carney runs The Civic Circle, which uses music and the arts to empower young students to understand and participate in democracy.
Even before the hit musical “Hamilton” debuted off Broadway nine years ago, composer and lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda knew it could be a powerful teaching tool.
“My first musical I ever wrote was a class assignment,” he told Arrive Magazine in 2016. Miranda and the show’s creators worked with two nonprofits to make sure his hip-hop take on the Alexander Hamilton story could be leveraged to help students understand U.S. history in a new way.
As Civic Learning Week kicks off, the "Hamilton" approach of using the arts to tell the American story from a fresh perspective remains an inspiration to educators everywhere.
One of the show’s very first audience members was Lesley Hermann, the first executive director of the Gilder Lehman Institute of American History. The institute’s Hamilton Education Program (EduHam) has since inspired more than 250,000 students to write and perform their own Hamilton-style songs. The program’s target audience from the start was students in Title I schools — those in low-income neighborhoods eligible for federal aid.
The “Hamilton” model of civic learning through the arts has growing relevance, particularly in vulnerable, low-income communities, where participation in the arts correlates with higher college attendance and civic engagement. As the National Civic League’s Michael Greer has written, research shows that “arts and culture” play “a key role in positive social outcomes.”
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That correlation is one reason I launched The Civic Circle, a Maryland nonprofit that uses music and the arts to empower students to understand and participate in democracy. Our offerings have included a “Hamilton” camp, and students in our after-school workshops (all in Title I schools) use poetry, music and the arts to explore seven civic skills that we call “steps to democracy.”
These are: civility and peaceful conflict resolution (Listen!), news literacy (Learn!), voting (Choose!), service-learning (Join!), advocacy (Speak!), organizing (Act!), and public service (Lead!).
As I noted recently in The Fulcrum, these “seven steps to democracy” are as relevant to adults as they are to students. Here’s an introduction to The Civic Circle that pays tribute to “Hamilton,” the champion of all civic arts success stories, performed here by Civic Circle teaching artists Munit Mesfin and Nick Newlin.
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Please visit The Civic Circle at www.theciviccircle.org, or email info@theciviccircle.org.
