Starting this Saturday, we enter what we affectionately refer to at Roman Music Therapy as “Conference Season”. The Federation of Children with Special Needs in Boston on February 29th kicks off three months of tabling at various conferences that are either geared toward the populations that we work with, or are professional music therapy conferences.
The Federation of Children with Special Needs “provides information, support, and assistance to parents of children with disabilities, their professional partners, and their communities”. Their conference on the 29th, “Visions of Community”, will be from 7:30am to 4:15pm at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston. With workshops focusing on assistive technology, autism, IEP goal setting, self-care, and transition planning, just to name a few, it is a conference that always provides relevant and timely information to families and professionals working with special needs children. Come by our table and find out how music therapy can help you or your child!
A week after the Federation Conference, Meredith will be flying out to Chicago to attend the Great Lakes Regional Music Therapy Conference, which runs March 4 – 7, 2020. There she will be presenting a CMTE on Financial Management, Building Your Music Therapy Dream Team with fellow music therapy business owner Erin Spring, Successfully Scaling Your Dream Business with music therapy business owners Erin Flores and Christina Wood and Keys to a Successful Community Based Early Childhood Program with co-found of Sprouting Melodies, Beth Schwartz. If you are a music therapist or music therapy student attending this conference, be sure to check out one of these presentations or stop by our table in the exhibit hall to learn about upcoming retreats, coaching and internship opportunities.
March 19 – 21, 2020 are the dates for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Music Therapy Conference in Maryland. There, Meredith will be presenting a CMTE on Financial Management, as well as a concurrent on Giftedness with Bronwen Landless.
Roman Music Therapy Services’ Eliza Trickett, MT-BC and Jenni Chute, MT-BC, will attend the Mass Down Syndrome Congress Conference at the DCU Center in Worcester on March 28th. The theme for this conference is “Trailblazers”, and the key note speaker will be Zack Gottsagen of the 2019 hit movie Peanut Butter Falcon. The conference will spotlight research, as well as provide families with tools for communication, collaboration, advocacy, and education.
In April, members of our team will be attending the North Eastern Regional Music Therapy Conference in Stowe, Vermont.
The Massachusetts Early Intervention Consortium Conference at the Best Western in Marlborough on May 4 & 5th culminates this whirlwind season of advocacy, education and ambassadorship. Meredith will be presenting “Music is Developmental” in the afternoon session. The key note speaker for this conference is Emily Perl Kingsley, who has been a writer for Sesame Street for the last 45 years. As a parent of a son with Down syndrome, she speaks about living through the “dark ages”, when professionals advocated for institutionalization rather than support. We have worked with many early intervention professionals in the area as they refer their clients to our Sprouting Melodies program in Wakefield. We hope to see some of them, and you, at the conference!