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Why Co-Work?

Some of the benefits of the pandemic and working online have included things that we would never have thought about doing when we were in-person. One of those things is the concept of co-working.

What is co-working? Why should we do it? And how does it apply to the voice student/professional?

Co-working existed before everyone went virtual – generally, it referred to self-employed people sharing a workspace and the accoutrements needed to run a business (office supplies, wi-fi, support staff, utilities, etc.) The space might or might not house people in a like field. Benefits include creating a sense of community (because being self-employed can be lonely!), saving money on those accoutrements, and just having a space that might be perceived as more professional than working out of your home, particularly if you share your home with pets, or children, or housemates who don’t want to have customers coming into their shared space.

With the necessary transition to working at home during the pandemic, co-working has gone virtual as well. Some of the obvious non-musical examples of this have been:

  1. Online school
  2. Meetings
  3. Webinars
  4. Watch parties

More ideas can be found in this article by Co-working maven Cat Johnson.

As musicians, we’ve applied that to our needs. We’ve done things like:

Something I’m adding is the concept of worksprints, or co-working with specific goals in mind for a specific time period. These are also referred to as pomodoro sprints, after the tomato-shaped timer of the same name. I talked about that a while back in this blogpost.

My performance-oriented high school students who have joined my MVP (Musically Vibrant Performer) program are the first students to offered this co-working option. We will be meeting on several Fridays to work together on things that maybe we have been putting off.

Our goals during this one hour time slot are to:

  1. Set an intention

  2. Be productive

  3. Be accountable

  4. and most importantly

  5. GET STUFF DONE

The first session was last week. It was kind of short notice and no one was available. However, I stayed the whole time and I got done a bunch of things I’d been putting off, including listening to a lesson that I’d had at the beginning of August.

Tomorrow I plan to start the first few modules of an online self-directed course I signed up for (and paid for) back in June. My students, should they actually show up (and it’s included in their package, so…. it’s their call) can do things like:

  • Filling out applications for college
  • Practicing a specific song or vocalise
  • Writing out the IPA for a foreign-language song
  • Translating the foreign language song word for word
  • Writing college essays
  • Listening to recordings of what they’re working on or want to work on next
  • Miscellaneous

How could co-working help you as a singer? Or maybe in another field? Perhaps you could put together your own cohort to set up some worksprint sessions and see how they work for you!

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Find out how you can become part of Mezzoid Voice Studio. Whether you’re in the MVP program or not, MVS is here to offer you membership in a community of supportive colleagues (and teacher!) to help you accomplish your artistic and personal goals.

Published by Mezzoid Voice Studio

Christine Thomas-O'Meally, a mezzo soprano and voice teacher currently based in the Baltimore-DC area, has performed everything from the motets of J.S. Bach to the melodies of Irving Berlin to the minimalism of Philip Glass. As an opera singer and actress, she has appeared with companies such as Charm City Players, Spotlighters Theatre, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera Theater of Northern Virginia, Opera North, the Washington Savoyards, In Tandem Theatre, Windfall Theater, The Young Victorian Theater of Baltimore, and Skylight Opera Theatre. She created the role of The Woman in Red in Dominick Argento’s Dream of Valentino in its world premiere with the Washington Opera and Mary Pickersgill in O'er the Ramparts at its world premiere during the Bicentennial of Battle of Baltimore at the Community College of Baltimore County. Other roles include Mrs. Paroo in Music Man, Mother Abbess in Sound of Music, Dorabella in Cosi Fan Tutte, Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro, both Hansel and the Witch in Hansel & Gretel, and many roles in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Her performance as the Housekeeper in Man of La Mancha was honored with a WATCH award nomination. Ms. Thomas-O'Meally received an M.M. in vocal performance from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She regularly attends master classes and workshops in both performance and vocal pedagogy, and is certified in all three Levels of Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method. Her students have performed on national and international tours of Broadway productions, at prestigious conservatories, and in regional theater throughout the country.

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