Musician Changemaker Accelerator Academy: Spring 2025 Cohort
Social change incubator helps musicians transform their communities
WILDER, VT, JANUARY, 2025—Music to Life kicks off its next Musician Changemaker Accelerator (MCA) Academy on January 13, 2025, when community-driven musicians will engage in 6.5 months of online training and coaching as social entrepreneurs. The only accelerator of its kind for musicians, the MCA provides training in strategic communication, concept/program development and partnership/resource development, followed by 1:1 coaching with experts in the nonprofit, business and entertainment fields. Developed from best-practice accelerator models in the tech, non-profit, and music industries, the MCA has been positively assessed by Americans for the Arts, the Tuck Consulting Group (at Dartmouth College), the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
“We are elevating a new model of how musicians can make sustainable change, supporting themselves and returning value to their communities” says Liz Stookey Sunde, Co-Founder & Executive Director of Music to Life. “This is about making a living while also making change.”
Music to Life’s MCA Academy application pool grew by 29% this year, with notable increases in diversity (age, race, abilities, genres) and geographic representation. The Spring 2025 cohort of 10 musicians each bring a music-driven community program they will develop or expand, addressing a variety of issues of social concern including: environmental discrimination, cultural preservation, substance abuse, disability awareness, LGBTQ+ representation, and racial equity in the arts.
María José Montijo - queer Boricua artist and participant in the Fall 2024 cohort - describes the Academy sessions as "deeply nourishing and encouraging." Using hands-on project-based learning, including generating grant proposals, business plans and artist value statements, artists build a theoretical and practical roadmap for making their concept a fundable reality. "When it comes to thinking about how my idea can become a recurring program, how I can plant it's roots somewhere and watch it blossom, the instructors helped me gain so much clarity," says Luke "Skippy" Harbur, fellow Fall 2024 participant.
The MCA Academy is made possible by the generosity of The Mellon Foundation, Shards of Light, A Still Small Voice Foundation, and other individual and corporate contributors. To download a .pdf of the Spring 2025 cohorts’ projects and profiles, click here or visit their individual profiles below.
