Three of Colorado’s beloved musical entities—Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom, River Beats, and the nonprofit organization The BoredomFighters Foundation—have collaborated to bring music production classes, workshops, mentorship programs, and more to Colorado schools.
With the backing of artists like Mersiv, Daily Bread, and Dirtwire’s David Satori, BoredomFighters has established six chapters across the U.S., hosted 529 workshops in 190 schools, and positively impacted 8,120 children. However, their vision extends far beyond this: BoredomFighters aims to provide music education and resources to 1,000,000 kids across the U.S.
A Community-Driven Initiative
Founded in 2017 by Tyler Manning and Blake Hondermann after launching Mersiv’s MorFlo Records in Colorado, BoredomFighters quickly shifted focus to ensuring children have access to music production resources from a young age.
Seven years later, Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom has become the first partner at the ‘Champion’ level in BoredomFighters’ new Next Stage initiative—a fundraising drive aimed at securing finances to support BoredomFighters’ ambitious goal of providing under-resourced communities with music production lessons, instruments, and workshops in Colorado and beyond. Cervantes, along with River Beats, is committed to raising $8,333 to cover one month of BoredomFighters’ operations.
River Beats Donates Ticket Sales All Summer Long
Denver’s popular summer pool parties, ‘The Deep,’ return this year at The X Denver, featuring artists like Late Night Radio and Integrate. Cervantes and River Beats will donate $2 per ticket sold directly to BoredomFighters. The initiative kicked off on July 13th with Late Night Radio, with a hot and sweaty, sold-out day of music.
Cervantes has a history of supporting various nonprofit organizations through its events and initiatives. Notable partners include Backline, Trees Water People, Everyone Orchestra, ZeroHero, Rex Foundation, HeadCount, Reverb, Dr. Bob’s SoundSchool, Punta Cana Ecological Foundation, and Conscious Alliance, showcasing Cervantes’ commitment to leveraging Denver’s music industry to support community-focused causes.
The Impact of BoredomFighters: Helping Kids Perform with Shaquille O’Neal
BoredomFighters is already setting young DJs and producers up for success. For example, Mesophonic, an 11-year-old dubstep prodigy, recently joined Shaquille O’Neal (DIESEL) on stage at Denver’s Mission Ballroom, playing one of his mixes in front of 4,000 people. This heartwarming moment went viral, introducing thousands to Mesophonic’s talent.
Mesophonic’s success stems from years of learning through BoredomFighters’ mentors and production classes, demonstrating the program’s effectiveness.
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Onward and Upward: BoredomFighters’ Global Aspirations
While BoredomFighters has significantly impacted music education in Colorado and beyond, their mission is ongoing. They aim to reach 1,000,000 kids across the U.S. with live workshops, mentorship programs, educator training, and music equipment donations. However, they need support to achieve this goal.
Join the Cause
The partnership between Cervantes, River Beats, and The BoredomFighters Foundation is a major step toward making music production accessible to young people in under-resourced communities. By attending ‘The Deep’ events or donating directly, supporters can help BoredomFighters continue their vital work.
For more information on BoredomFighters and volunteer opportunities, click here. To learn more about ‘The Deep’ event series and upcoming shows, click here.
We had the pleasure of speaking with BoredomFighters’ co-founder and Executive Director, Tyler Manning, about his biggest challenges faced, future aspirations, and more. Check out our conversation below!
[TSIS]: Can you tell us a bit about the founding of BoredomFighters and what inspired you to start this organization?
[Tyler]: It started with us throwing events (ForMo Productions) and building up artists through a record label (MorFlo Records), this led to an immersion in music making and setting up studios at festivals and events to create music with the community. We were invited to bring this idea to a school in Boulder in 2017 and realized the potential to solve the gap in music education with the resources we’ve gathered from our work in the music industry. We then met Sade’ Cooper of CHIC Denver, formed a partnership to bring workshops to Park Hill schools and have expanded from there.
How has the organization evolved since its inception in 2017?
Alongside our network of producer mentors growing significantly, the most impactful change is that schools and organizations are beginning to take us seriously and see that we have the tools needed to create a sense of belonging in the classroom. Every year more communities see the potential and our offerings continue to grow. We now operate chapters throughout Colorado in Denver, Longmont, Fort Collins, Crestone, as well as Grand Rapids and Detroit in Michigan and Long Beach in California. All chapters have leaders and teams in place who build relationships with youth centers and music makers to expand program offerings and reach.
Can you elaborate on the different programs and workshops BoredomFighters offers?
INSTRUMENT GARDEN:
Our keystone workshop is the Instrument Garden Studio workshop, where we guide groups through a one hour experience of producing beats, melodies, and vocals using the sounds in the space and their own voices. This workshop is built for the most novice noisemakers and expert earbenders to create in harmony together, no matter the group size, age, or experience level.
We also offer this as an installation at events for ongoing free flowing studio sessions that allows patrons to explore different music modalities.
CAMP BOREDOMFIGHTERS: The Young Music Maker’s Studio Immersive:
A two week camp in the mountains of Colorado at YMCA Camp Shady Brook where youth embark on a week long studio immersive through making music with their peers and a team of 20+ national touring acts, then perform their music at the end of the week on a proper HSD Sound System (donated by Unify Mountain Soundz). The first week (Discovery Week) is for youth just getting into music and learning about the magic of music production, while the second week (Advanced Week) is for kids who are already producing. They bring their laptops and we dive deep on curating their sound and artist project to get them ready for real world music industry experience.
GOOD PRODUCER PROGRAM:
Online 1on1 mentorships for youth around the world to seek guidance from their role models in crafting their sound. This allows us to expand on the knowledge when we meet youth in our workshops who want to dive deeper. Similar to a Big Brother/Big Sister type of program. (This is really in a Beta form right now with youth we’ve met in our workshops, it needs a little more resources to be what it should be but we are chipping away at it as we hone in on finding proper support).
What has been the most rewarding success story or impact that BoredomFighters has had on a student or community?
There are so many, it’s hard to choose one. It’s been very rewarding to help start chapters in different cities by empowering and supporting producers in their journey to hosting workshops and events that boost up young music makers. In Fort Collins, we’ve helped TwoScoops build out programs that led to forming “New Bloodline” a conscious youth hip hop group out of the Cultural Enrichment Center who got to open for Dead Prez after writing their own music and choreography in 6 months of workshops. That was all him, Jordan, and Blake just empowering each other and the kids at the same time.
There’s also Mesophonic, who’s been seeing a lot of traction after we connected him with friends of Shaq (DJ Diesel) who ended up bringing him on stage to play his own original track to a sold out Mission Ballroom. He’s really such a humble and talented kid, it’s incredible for him to have the BF community to hold space for him.
How did the partnerships with Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom and River Beats come about?
Somewhere in Denver one night I found myself going b2b with Greg Glassman from River Beats at a house party and we hit it off. He’s been a huge supporter for years now and doing great work with their SHIFT series. He connected me with Evan when they got ready to kick off a string of pool parties this summer called “The Deep” and it happened to align just at the right time the day after our board meeting where we finalized our “Next Stage Champions” initiative to seek larger pledges and ongoing support from the music industry. They were quick to say yes and the partnership has helped set the pace for other Champions to come on board since, including The Ticketing Co. and Sub.mission.
What are some of the biggest challenges BoredomFighters has faced in its journey?
Building a nonprofit has so many new dynamics to unfold that have taken a lot of time and failures to get used to, mostly around paying for things like gear, educators, and coordinators. Also, in the beginning it took a while for schools and orgs to take us seriously, we were doing free workshops as much as possible outside of our other jobs and just really honing in on how to make the most magic in each session.
Now we are getting requests from schools and community builders all over the country, and the deficit is more about needing infrastructure to support them and having some kind of funding to pay the folks putting in 50+ hours per week to coordinate that impact. Our impact comes directly from human time and energy so we’re learning now more than ever that our most valuable investment for impact scaling is into people who can coordinate these experiences and flow of resources.
How do you plan to overcome these challenges?
A full time team. SOP’s and motivated donors are the steps we are prioritizing to get that. When we can finally have full time staff who aren’t working multiple jobs to make ends meet while also coordinating all of this. We want to get to the point where someone can say “I want to help kids make beats in my town” then we send a team out, do a few assemblies in the schools, partner with some promoters on an event, and leave the producers in the town feeling empowered to support ongoing learning in the community. If we can support them in holding ongoing music production enrichment programs at the schools, libraries, etc, and producing events that the youth can perform at; we build a funnel for real world purpose driven skill application from the youth and the producer mentors.
Can you tell us more about the Next Stage initiative and what it aims to achieve?
This is our strategy for “keeping the lights on”. If we can find entities who have a large network that are down to pledge an amount towards elevating our mission, we can have a stable layer of support to fund our operating expenses and stop operating from such a scarcity mindset. Our goal is to have $100k per year for operations and to split that up among 12 entities who pledge to cover one month of those expenses ($8,333). Ideally we find folks who are in abundance that can raise that amount with small bursts of effort like donating $X per ticket from a show they are throwing, charity merch collabs, etc. For an example, if an artist were to donate $1 from every ticket sold at a sold out Red Rocks show, that one show would cover the pledge without breaking the bank for them. It benefits the artist by showing their fans they care about supporting the next generation, and they get the nonprofit tax cut, all while alleviating a huge pressure from us to keep this functioning and meet the demand. Seems like an easy win/win if we can align with the right promoters, agencies, artists, etc.
What are some of the future projects or expansions we can look forward to from BoredomFighters?
More extended workshop series that take kids from the moment of discovering that they are music all the way up through opening up for their favorite artists.
This will be in the form of camps, ongoing curriculum in schools, digital learning, and eventually our own property for curating a permanent Instrument Garden fusing nature with music making experiences.
How do you see the role of music education evolving in the coming years, especially in under-resourced communities?
I would love to see it cater more towards student guided learning, where kids can make the music they want to make and music teachers can be the shepherds of that. It’s going to have to if they want to retain learners. The world is distracting and after COVID it seems harder than ever to get kids to buy-in to what the teachers want.
What has been the most personally fulfilling aspect of your work with BoredomFighters?
This past two weeks at camp we had quite a few young creators in our sessions who started out the week very shy and reserved with little confidence in themselves. By the end of the week, we’re seeing them smile, jump up and down, and just light up when sharing their creations on a proper sound system. They are telling me they can’t wait to play more shows, and they love making music. That’s the magic. Maybe even one of them will learn that they can do that with their life. Making or playing music with my friends and family has given me so many moments of life affirming joy, and I just feel like it makes sense to use my energy to support other people having moments like that too.
How can the local community get involved and support BoredomFighters’ mission?
If you have a platform, please consider using it to raise contributions and awareness that keeps us going.
If you’re a producer, instrumentalist, or MC and want to get involved with workshops, we can always use more creative energy in the sessions.
If you’re a coordinator or spreadsheet wizard, we have a Slack network for committees of advisors and are always wanting to learn and collaborate with people who can donate any amount of advice or energy towards building this out more.
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