Reese Tanimura › Rain City Rock Camp

on December 6, 2017February 19, 2020 by Reese Tanimura

Lotto Bands!

‘Lotto Bands’ is a new opportunity to GET FIERCE! Participants will form a band with 3 other musicians of varying experience levels where you will collaborate and create, fiercely, together over one month. Band members will establish their own practice schedule and each band will be formed with at least one available practice space. (If you have a space available, please note this in the form.) The end goal is to have at least one original song and play at the showcase up to 15 minutes.

Women and gender-diverse people age 18+ who are ready to play in a band setting are welcome to apply. If you have done LRC at least once, you are ready!

For some, Lotto Band is that next step after participating in LRC to try out a (short term) more formal band setting. For others, it’s a way to shake things up with other ROCKERS or to try out an instrument they are less familiar with. For everyone, it’s a way to participate in RCRC community, get to know new friends, and practice getting FIERCE through playing music together.

Lotto Bands is brought to you by the LRC HYPE Committee, a group of LRC alum and volunteers who are dedicated to increasing engagement, participation, and fierceness in our community!

Key dates:
Kickoff – Saturday, 1/13/18, 1-3pm at Seattle Central College, 1701 Broadway, first floor atrium
Showcase – Saturday, 2/17/18, 6pm at Skylark Cafe, 3803 Delridge Way SW

Check out the APPLICATION for more details!

on November 9, 2017November 25, 2017 by Reese Tanimura

Taking Rock Camp out into the World

Dear Fierce & Phenomenal Rock Camp Community,

It is with a happy-sad heart that I am announcing my departure from the Rain City Rock Camp staff. The opportunity to work and serve with such exceptional and passionate co-workers, and amongst a community of enormously caring and committed youth and adults has been life-giving, and quite frankly life-changing in the best way possible. I will miss being surrounded by beautiful, artistic, and tenacious social-justice warriors on the daily! But, the complete infiltration of Rock Camp culture and ethic into every aspect of my life is a gift that I feel fortunate to be able to take with me, and hopefully, spread to more people and places in this world!

From my first time volunteering at Ladies Rock Camp in 2011, I knew that RCRC was a very special organization. Whether in the joyous energy of cartwheels by a camp director welcoming a group of wide-eyed womxn to the “camp way” OR in the thunderous declaration of “WE ARE THE BAND” by hundreds of youth, volunteers, family and friends, Rain City Rock Camp exemplifies extraordinary in every way. Over these past six years, the community has grown in so many ways. We have cultivated a collective mindset to make these amazing opportunities accessible (instructionally, financially and geographically) for MORE girls, womxn and gender non-conforming/non-binary individuals by:

Working together to create highly relevant curriculum and leadership guides;
Implementing the sliding scale tuition format and launching community sponsorship programs, and;
Partnering with locations in the South Sound to amplify our mission.

We have activated and nurtured youth bands that have captivated venue and festival stages, as well as adult “fledglings” to embrace their inner rock stars, so ferociously that they are filling Teaching Artist roles just a few years later. And, in this past year, as we have actually seen threats to our communities rise; we have held our ground, raised our voices, marched, wrote letters, wrote songs, phoned, resisted and shown up for each other AND for our larger community.

As of December, I will be taking up the Managing Director role at Northwest Folklife. I am so excited to continue to create spaces where our communities’ most marginalized voices have a platform to remind us all of our deep cultural roots and of the brilliance that thriving diversity brings to our society. I will also be thrilled to volunteer for, advocate for, donate to and keep expanding community with Rain City Rock Camp. Wherever the future finds me, it will be feminist, fierce and fabulous.

Thank you so much for the love, support and community that has TRANSFORMED and EMPOWERED me to be able to take these next steps in my own journey. And as always, ROCK ON!

With all my heart,

Reese