Students will investigate the decline of local music venues by engaging directly with community members, analyzing the relationship between dance history and music production, and defining a focused, evidence-based challenge grounded in firsthand observations and conversations.

Students will conduct rigorous community-centered research to analyze the decline of local music venues and the cultural role of historically rooted dance styles, synthesize interview and secondary evidence into a root cause analysis, and propose an evidence-based solution to guide the engineering of their music production showcase.

Students will generate multiple evidence-based solution concepts for a historically informed music production showcase, evaluate them against documented community needs, gather feedback from Berkshire Music School partners, and develop a detailed, testable plan for implementation.

Students will implement their historically informed music production showcase at a local venue or partner site, collect real-time audience and stakeholder data, and analyze results to determine effectiveness and scalability of their solution to support local musicians and revive culturally rooted performance spaces.

Students will present their historically informed music production showcase and documented impact to Berkshire Music School partners and local venue stakeholders, tracing their full DEEDS journey from discovery through implementation. They will articulate how community voices shaped their artistic and logistical decisions, analyze commercialization and cultural context, and reflect on their growth as artists and community collaborators.