Award Winners

Hipp "Pay it Forward" Award: Love in Music

Nominated by Celis Lee '20

Founded in 2007, Love in Music is a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, California dedicated to building community and alliance among largely immigrant populations through music.

Over the last decade, Love in Music has impacted over 1,000 students in the Los Angeles area through weekly music lessons taught by volunteer music faculty, professional performers, and college/high school students.

Students are selected to join the program by the recommendation of other community-based non-profits who identify underserved families.

These volunteers commit to teaching hourly lessons throughout the entire year.

Love in Music covers all expenses, providing lesson venues, instruments, and all other necessary supplies to all the students.

Crawford Courage Award: RA Washington of Mourning [A] BLKstar

Nominated by John Colpitts '91

Writer, musician, and activist RA Washington created the music collective Mourning [A] BLKstar (MAB) in 2015. Founded in Cleveland, Ohio, MAB is a multi-generational, gender and genre non-conforming amalgam of Black Culture dedicated to servicing the stories and songs of the apocalyptic diaspora. Their songs openly address issues of racism, oppression, and police violence.

Cleveland, Ohio was recently named the poorest large city in the United States. MAB's continued success is not only a boon to the city's Black creative community but because of their music's politically driven message and collective model, they serve as a weapon against the continued disenfranchisement of Black ideas and actively push back against the idea of the Black monolith.

RA Washington will use the $10,000 Crawford Award to fund MAB's upcoming recording project, Ancient//Future. Ancient//Future addresses the American nightmare, seeking to honor Black history through slave chant, field songs, funeral dirges, and church shouts. He plans to have the record finished by April/May 2021, after which he will partner with Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry's Men's Shelter, the largest men's shelter in Cleveland, for a summer concert series fundraiser.

Andris Conservation Award: Anne Stires '94, founder of Juniper Hill School

Anne Stires is the founder and Director of Development, Outreach, and Advocacy at the Juniper Hill School in Alna, Maine. Juniper Hill School for Place-Based Education connects children to themselves, to each other, and to their communities through studying both the natural and human environments. It is also the site of conscientious objection and civil action on behalf of the environment.

Anne Stires will use the $5,000 Andris Award to fund programming in which Juniper Hill serves as a model for what is possible for other programs to easily implement outdoor learning. The profits from the observer days will go towards a scholarship fund for the school's Summer Institutes.