Peace Tracks: Digital Music Virtual Youth Exchange as a Tool to Inspire Peace

The Plugged In Band Program near Boston, Massachusetts in the United States is a nonprofit youth rock band program founded in 2002 that teaches kids how to create songs and play music - empowering them to use their music or social change.  

In 2021, Plugged In co-founded Peace Tracks with Washington, DC based, MapWorks Learning.  Peace Tracks is a cross-cultural, online exchange for middle and high school students using music to foster collaboration, compassion and global understanding.  

Participants are grouped into multinational bands with each band composing, performing, recording, and producing an original song and music video about issues their generation or culture is facing and the positive change they want to create in the world. Participants develop skills in communication, cross-cultural collaboration, songwriting, video editing, and creating, recording, and mixing music. Each Peace Tracks session culminates in a live-streamed concert on YouTube featuring the bands’ songs and music videos with participants celebrating each other’s work through a live chat.

In this Co-Create and Network session, Sandra Rizkallah, Plugged In/Peace Tracks co-founder, will give a short introduction about Peace Tracks.  Then, participants will have the chance to participate in a mini-Peace Tracks session by selecting a theme about social change for their song, collaboratively writing lyrics for a short song , and creating a beat and vocals for their song using Soundtrap, a digital audio workstation.  

Past Peace Tracks sessions have included youth from Morocco, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestinian Territories and the US.