Our mission at Whitehorse Musicians Guild is to enhance, stimulate and educate our community through the production of events featuring music, performing arts and collaborations that are inclusive and accessible to everyone. It was started by musicians who met on Wednesdays to play music together at the Whitehorse Community Center. Our rural town is financially depressed, and there are many unders
erved families and individuals in the area. We musicians wanted to do something good for our neighbors and the community. Our first project was to clear an old dumping ground at the site of an abandoned mill owned by an elderly couple who couldn’t afford to pay someone to maintain it. We saw it as an opportunity to maximize the good by cleaning up the area in exchange for permission to use it as the site for a community picnic. Our group of volunteers spent a week clearing brush, garbage, glass, and appliances from the site and then set up a stage powered by a small generator donated by our local hardware store. We played music to about sixty or so neighbors for most of the day enjoying food brought and shared by many in the neighborhood. The year after that we added a tour of the area offered by a local historian from the Darrington Historical Society and hosted musicians from the local high school on our stage. Many of our neighbors are artists and they brought their art for show and to sell and we collected canned goods from those in attendance for the local food bank. All those involved experienced great personal reward for the joy we brought to our community so consistent with our dedication of service to our community we incorporated within the state of Washington in 2009 as a nonprofit charity so we could continue to sustain our efforts. Over the next couple of years with the sponsorship of many local small businesses and the help of volunteers, we were able to serve our community in an even broader sense. We provided audio support for the local high school graduation, provided audio and video support for large memorials held at the local community center, played music for the town contra dances at our local grange and coproduced a town talent show. We provided music at Darrington Days (a town art event) and in the local park as part of the town’s fourth of July celebration. We even organized several roadside cleanup events. To give something back to the businesses that sponsored us we hosted small acoustic music events at their sidewalk sales and in other cases loaned instruments to restaurants and coffee shops to be played by their patrons. During this period, we began to come into our own as we addressed ever-changing needs aided by a growing pool of sponsors. In 2014 following a landslide in our area that buried a small neighborhood taking with it 43 of our neighbors we did our part by providing audio and public address support for community meetings attended by rescuers and politicians. In the aftermath we worked in cooperation with other local entities in the production of events targeted toward healing our community. We soon learned that relying on local businesses for sponsorship was akin to borrowing from the hungry to feed the starving so to do more for our community we sought resources beyond those in our community. We worked in cooperation with other nonprofits to produce music events in neighboring cities and towns, and hosted beer gardens at large festivals and family street fairs. By doing this we were able to continue to provide valuable work in our community without having to rely on our struggling local businesses to support it. In addition to the music and services we provided we were able to refurbish and donate musical instruments to the high school band program, offer music lessons and extend aid to needy families in the area by donating to local shelters and food banks. In recent years we have participated in even larger events raising money for Seattle Children’s hospital and the National MS society. Our board of directors is diverse and represents a good cross section of our local demographic. Because of this we can access a broader range of both need and relief. Music is important to many in our community as a relief from the stress of our chaotic world. We use it as a hub through which to network and grow stronger as a community. Members of our board routinely sit in on local public board meetings from other organizations including town and county councils to maintain a broad vision of community needs and resources so that we can apply our efforts to affect the greatest good. Going forward we plan to continue as a conduit between resources and those in need. With a 501c3 classification we intend to sustain our efforts by appealing to a larger resource pool necessary to meet the needs of a growing underserved population and to remain, as our tagline would suggest, instrumental in the community.
