CLARA HARDIE

Founding Director & Lead Violin Teacher of Detroit Youth Volume
​Creator & Facilitator of Youth Volume Teacher Training
Picture
Hello! I'm Clara Hardie, an activist music educator & founder of Youth Volume, an equitable music studio model exemplified by our decade-old lab school, Detroit Youth Volume (DYV), where I Direct & teach violin. Here's what led me to where I'm at today!

I was raised by two medical practitioners in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who were locally engaged on a grassroots level AND internationally. For example, my mom & dad took my sibs & me on medical missions to Haiti for our "Spring Break" when I was 14. I started Suzuki violin at age 5. During high school, I was an academic, music and sports star. I also toured Europe for a month with the Blue Lake International Youth Symphony!

I studied Social Science Theory at University of Michigan. I was a student activist who helped ultimately kick Coca-Cola off campus due to international human rights & environmental abuses. I lived in New York City for one summer as an intern with a microfinance bank providing small loans to women in Haiti.

After college, I moved into the oldest anarchist housing collective & art space that exists in this country. I met my poet/roofer/punk/DJ husband there through the Trumbullplex Booking Collective. Together we planned & carried out creative community-building shows & events.

While living at Trumbullplex, I also worked as Program Assistant at the Rosa Parks Youth Program within the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, under Dominican Sister & art therapist, Nancyann Turner, for four years.

In 2010, I moved in with my husband on the urban prairie not far from Trumbulplex and downtown Detroit. We live in what was once a shell, which became its own work of art & our home where we raise our twin babies.

I also completed my first Suzuki violin teacher training in 2010, quit my job to start Detroit Youth Volume so I could provide free Suzuki violin lessons to kids from the soup kitchen & teach my friend’s kids from the Detroit activist artist community.

Since then, DYV has become my dream music school & I LOVE helping other music teachers nurture their own studios with diversity & equity through the Youth Volume online training.