SONG*LINES PROJECT
weaving Village by singing together in places we love
Spring 2025, Iowa City
in partnership with Grant Wood Art Colony + the University of Iowa School of Music
TO REGISTER, <SIGN UP HERE>
“Our songs travel the earth. We sing to one another. Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original. They all come from the same place and go back to a time when only the stones howled.” — Louise Erdrich
“We belong to the land and it belongs to us. We sing to the land, sing about the land. We are that land. It sings to us.” ~ Songspirals: Sharing Women’s Wisdom of Country Through Songlines, Gay'wu Group of Women
SUNDAYS, 2-4pm
(SITE ~ 🎵 THEME)
FEB 2: RSFIC ~ 🎵 resilience
FEB 16: sacred collective ~ 🎵 queer Love
MAR 2: PS1 Close House ~ 🎵 we weave the web
MAR 16: CITY HIGH ~ 🎵 <with the theatre program> *NOTE: 1-3PM
MAR 30: Stanley Museum ~ 🎵 cross-pollenation
APRIL 13: Johnson County Historic Poor Farm ~ 🎵 land connection
APRIL 27: Bike Library ~ 🎵 people power
MAY 4 : “BIG SING” @ OLD BRICK, 2-5pm
How do we feel for and lift up the soul of a place? How do we intentionally weave together those who are stoking it, in rest + play + dreaming? How does the ancient, simple act of singing together remind us what our bones already know? How does this humble, collective music-making feed Life and the land that gives us home?
I’m learning about and deeply inspired by the Aboriginal tradition of songlines (also called song spirals or “dreaming tracks”) that map pathways of intimacy between land and people. New to this community, I’m feeling for the whisper of wind and song of river, the chorus of those already working for justice, fueling resilience, and insisting on beauty….steady thrum of the One Song in between and beneath the noise of modern discord.
For me, part of sensing a new place is feeling for resonance with those laboring in love and joining them in vision. Songs are a vital nutrient that catalyzes and refreshes work we will never see finished.
My hope for this project is to nourish the thriving of local community-building organizations and to cross-pollinate new connections by weaving these sites of aliveness together with a series of song circles that culminates in a Big Sing.