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Welcome to the Village

Registration for 2024 is now closed. If you missed us this year, make sure to join our mailing list, and stay tuned for updates about next year.

Song Village 2024 introduces Sarah MacEwan as our new lead organizer! Sarah takes the reins as Tim and Amy step into participant/mentor roles. We welcome Sarah’s reverent and passionate embracing of the vision that founded Song Village, and all the singers and songleaders who continue to co-create it.

Please contact Sarah with all questions about the event.

Soul Village 2024
August 15-18

Soul Village is our sister gathering that celebrates life with both dancing AND singing. (It is not another version of Song Village). If you love to both dance and sing, check out Soul Village on the Soul Village website.

Our Purpose

Community singing is the technology of belonging – Laurence Cole

Song Village is about building community through song. We come here to connect, to support, to belong. And as we sing, we create a village where each voice is heard, and each person is celebrated.

It Takes a Village

Song Village culture is created by the participants. Some people may facilitate sessions with their song leading skills, but our goal is to create an egalitarian atmosphere, where each person is welcomed, esteemed, and given a chance to express themselves.

What is Song Village?

Song Village is held in a beautiful redwood forest in the Santa Cruz mountains. We have song circles throughout the day, lead by guest song leaders or by the participants themselves. 

At Song Village the focus is on singing. We are all about participation, not so much about performance. Other instruments are played only to support the voices, never to drown them out. Our gatherings also include fun and rich community building events, including dance, improv theater, heart share circles and delicious meals, all consciously facilitated to help everyone feel included and connected.

Building a Liberatory and Regenerative Community at Song Village

We get there together or never get there at all – Josh Blaine

We aspire to cultivate a liberatory and regenerative community at Song Village. When we say liberatory, we mean that we are shifting intentionally away from many of the principles centered in the culture of colonization – principles like domination, extraction, appropriation, competition, racism, and other forms of discrimination – toward principles that better serve us – such as interdependence, reciprocity, love, humility, and complexity. When we say regenerative, we mean that we are working to mimic the astonishing ability of the natural world, and of many indigenous groups worldwide, to grow and thrive in a way that simultaneously replenishes and sustains life more broadly.

Building a liberatory and regenerative community aligns with the overarching purpose of Song Village, enhancing collective well-being and fostering a sense of belonging for all members. Community singing serves as a collective healing process, but its efficacy relies on inclusivity. True inclusivity requires standing in solidarity with marginalized communities. Without intentional efforts to dismantle systemic injustice, society’s inertia perpetuates harm towards marginalized groups. These efforts are necessary to realize the community singing movement’s vision for a peaceful, loving, and sustainable world.

Acknowledgement: Our ideas around liberation have been inspired by thought leaders in the queer Black feminist movement and beyond. Our ideas around regeneration were inspired by Native American thought leaders and also by the natural world itself. We’ve included a small handful of resources from these thought leaders below.

In order to uphold this vision, we commit to 

  • Center access for people who are often marginalized, for example by providing an all-gender restroom, and seating toward the center for people who require seating
  • Offer scholarships to reduce financial barriers
  • Provide a low-barrier way to let organizers know if there is something to improve
  • Tithe to the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band 
  • Care for the environment by bringing our own dishes
  • Continue to explore opportunities for diverse, distributed leadership
  • Keep growing and changing as we learn

In order to uphold this vision, we invite everyone at Song Village to

  • Take care with one another while sharing this space. Support each person’s freedom to participate in the event in ways that serve them well.
  • Co-create the conditions for healing, learning, and growing – 
    • Be compassionate and loving with ourselves and one another
    • Do our best to hold multiple truths and work with differences in order to disrupt harmful dynamics and make space for healthier dynamics to emerge
    • Know that every voice matters. If you have ideas for how to uphold this vision, share them! If someone else does, listen!

Do your best until you know better. When you know better, do better – Maya Angelou

Song Village Nonprofit Sponsor

Shine a Light Counseling Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded to provide low fee counseling services to the California central coast community. Song Village cofounder, Tim Hartnett, is the executive director of Shine a Light. Starting in 2020 Song Village has been adopted as a project of Shine a Light Counseling Center. This means that all administration of Song Village will be coordinated by Shine a Light. The event is budgeted to break even, but sponsorship by Shine a Light offers Song Village some financial backing in case of a loss or liability, as well as a good destination for any unexpected profit.