FLY!
a new initiative that uses the joy and power of drumming as a means to engage with a wide range of vulnerable populations and community-based human service providers across the United States. FLY! is collaborative, interactive, imaginative, emergent, and joyful.
Using drum as a point of departure FLY! has five critical goals:
Empowering people marginalized by historic social and economic forces by giving them direct, sustained access to accomplished, professional artists through collaboration on creative projects. FLY! facilitates ongoing, personal collaboration between innovative artists and people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Connecting with people in a variety of settings including homeless shelters, supportive housing sites, recovery communities, youth service centers, and in other vulnerable communities.
Delivering ongoing programming not only in drumming, music, and the arts, but to develop life skills—including writing skills, critical thinking, decision-making, and other mentoring supports that will open new opportunities and connections for participants.
Establishing and supporting a new network of small to mid-sized human service providers in eleven cities across the US by 2027.
Creating an ongoing system through which visiting artists-in-residence will identify, train, and support local community members at each site, enabling them to develop resident-led activities as the project progresses.
THE DRUM possesses a uniquely powerful ability to generate a sense of group belonging and to connect people to the heartbeat, and to the rhythms of the universe. Drumming has been employed since time immemorial for communicating, heightening unity and group focus, raising spirits, and creating joyful community.
Given the enormous and growing need to support vulnerable youth and families—particularly in the current political climate and as traditional human service providers struggle to maintain consistent and positive connections with communities they seek to support—FLY! has been conceived as an impactful and cost-effective method to create human connections, and to leverage these connections in ways that improve conditions in communities.
In 35 years of leading drumming workshops, drummer/composer and Continuum Artistic Director, Andrew Drury, has developed a model of community work that is exciting and therapeutic for people in almost any setting. Expanding from the success of Drury’s drumming workshops, FLY! also presents interactive performances by selected musicians in informal settings, and workshops in storytelling, voice, movement, visual art, writing, and performance art.
In addition to Drury, our artists have included Terry Jenoure, Steve and Bokani Dyer (South Africa), JR Rhodes, Melanie Scholz (South Africa/US), Jay Rodriguez, Maria Valencia (Colombia), Magha Rawoot (India), and The Forest percussion ensemble.
FLY! activities have taken place in partnership with community organizations in 9 cities and rural areas across the US including the Low Income Housing Institute in Seattle, Red Hook Initiative and other locations in Brooklyn, Stay Strange (San Diego), Safe Place for Youth and the Urban Voices Project on Skid Row in Los Angeles, the International District Library in Albuquerque, with several organizations in Flagstaff, Nashua, New Hampshire, and elsewhere.
In 2025-26 we will be partnering with Riverbend, an addiction services and support organization based in Lowell, Massachusetts, and with several organizations in New Mexico and Arizona. We are also also developing a visual arts program in eastern Long Island.
If you would like to know more about FLY! please contact us!
