Consulting & Workshops

Based on over 30 years of working with community organizations and research on queer choral musicking, Dr. Balén offers tailored workshops, strategic planning, and diversity trainings to boards and choral groups to strengthen their social justice practices.

contact Jules at +1.805.437.8435 or julia.balen@csuci.edu


Sample Workshops

Comfort + Confrontation = Change

How does our singing support social change? Understanding the human mechanics behind how choral musicking practices effect change in ourselves and others can help us better engage this powerful tool to greater effect. This hands-on workshop will offer participants some useful frameworks for understanding and better engaging the mechanisms of personal and social change. Participants will leave with at least one action they and/or their choruses can take to move the needle on social change.


Making More Queerly Joyful Noise

Explore queer choral musicking as a form of potentially transformative intimacy necessary to healing ourselves and our world to bring about more robust social change. Participants will leave with at least one practice for creating more queerly joyful noise.


Our Stories Matter

Our stories matter to the social change we intend to create. They must transform the interlocking webs of stories that define who we can be and how we relate. What stories is your chorus telling the world through music about what it means to be LGBTIQ+? What stories are you creating about what greater social justice might look like? Are there more effective ways to tell our stories to create more social justice? This workshop will explore the relationship between identities, stories, and social change and ask how we might be more intentional in creating greater social justice.