Vision

Mission

The EcoVoice Project (The EcoVP) uses music and interdisciplinary collaboration to inform, connect, and inspire people to act for environmentally just causes.

Importance

Everyone loves music. Humans have been making music since prehistory. The oldest known instruments are 60,000-year-old bone flutes made by our Neanderthal cousins. Still, the voice is older, with some evolutionary biologists theorizing that language and music came from a protolanguage. Utterances grew increasingly complex in meaning and structure. Sustained calls echoing across plains and jungles, the soft coos comforting babies, the sick, and the dying — these became the singing we recognize in ceremonies and entertainment.

While the origins of music remain a mystery, we can be sure of a few facts. First, we know it was essential to our ancestors. While saber-toothed tigers and starvation were everyday struggles, humans and neanderthals found time to craft and play instruments. They even buried their dead with them. Second, we know that the practice is universal. Ancient cave paintings depict musical instruments like flutes and drums across time and geographic space. Every known community today engages with music. Evolution would have weeded out the practice long ago if music had not been necessary.

So what can music do for us as people concerned with the environment? Can it save the world? If we blast John Lennon’s “Imagine” simultaneously worldwide, would all war end and environmental degradation cease? What is the real power of music? And how can we harness it?

Music unites and invites action.

The EcoVP takes advantage of what music does best: it invites us in, compels us to listen and reflect, and moves us to action. It creates space through performances and dialogue to engage the complexities of our interaction with nature and the challenges our global ecosystems and climate face.

Video from The EcoVP launch party.

Work

The EcoVP is an arts organization designed to bring awareness to climate change and environmental issues through musical performance. The EcoVoice Project connects musicians, interdisciplinary artists, scientists, and community members through a series of concerts, guest speakers, outreach, and civic engagement. Through thoughtfully curated multidisciplinary work, it seeks to inspire people to act for environmentally just causes. We further seek to—

  • Educate people about the effects of climate change and inspire them to act

  • Create a space where music brings people together for environmental activism

  • Explore creative ways to run an arts organization with sustainability as a priority

  • Serve as a model for artists and arts organizations through sustainable practices

  • Encourage participatory music-making 

  • Create new music that meaningfully engages people with today’s challenges

The core of The EcoVP is a summer festival that offers live musical and interdisciplinary performances with accompanying panel discussions focused on the intersection of the music and environmentalism. In 2022, The EcoVoice Festival will be held concurrently with the annual Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy program and bilobate between Loyola and the University of Illinois Chicago. It will take a global view of climate challenges but seek to build community locally with area musicians and other artists, climate scientists and activists, and concerned community members.