CitySongs was launched in 1992 as an out-of-school music and youth development program to help inner-city children develop competence, confidence, and individual potential through diverse group music participation. Founded by Executive Director Helen Kivnick, Professor in the University of Minnesota’s School of Social Work, together with a diverse and committed group of neighbors and professionals from throughout the metro area, CitySongs has consistently improved the well-being of children and communities through:

1) Strength promotion in individual participants
2) A holistic orientation toward individual and community
3) Exemplifying collaboration and mutual responsibility
4) Understanding and celebrating diversity.

• CitySongs was named a Governor’s Star Youth Service Program for seven consecutive years.
• The December 2003 launch of U of M President Robert Bruininks’ Presidential Commission on Out-of-School Time (within the Children, Youth and Families Initiative) was built around a CitySongs performance, featuring it as a model program that illustrates “best practice.”
• With Helen Kivnick, CitySongs has received the U of M Community Service Award (2002, for community impact), St. Paul’s William “Billie” Griffin Award (2001, for using the arts at several levels to address social issues), Minnesota Black Music Awards and many other distinctions.
• CitySongs has been featured in a Syl Jones/WCCO documentary as a program that takes youth who are “scripted for trouble” and “rescripts” them for success.
• CitySongs has released two CDs, blending street-smart, original compositions about peer pressure, aspiration, anti-racism, teamwork, and human decency, with high-quality instrumental accompaniment (Keeping Love Alive, 1998; Erasing Racism, 2003).
• CitySongs Kids also appear on the Will You Be My Friend CD released nationally by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project.