Storm Gloor, CU Denver’s 2018 award winner for Excellence in Teaching, has spoken at music conferences all over the nation. In 2018, Gloor, along with three College of Arts & Media students, visited the international Music Cities Conference in Lafayette, Louisiana where they reported on a project done in conjunction with the City of Arvada, Colorado.

“We were a big hit in terms of the interest we created in promoting Music Cities curriculum in higher ed," said Gloor. "A LOT of folks smothered us afterward with interest and questions, and I heard from quite a few post-conference wanting to learn more.”

The Music Cities Convention is the largest and most extensive global gathering on the topic of Music Cities. People in government, academics, various cities, and organizations in the music scene come together to discuss, debate, and introduce new ways of thinking. The aim of the convention is to improve city life through the use of music and its variants including music education, employment, licensing, and placemaking. Gloor developed the Music Cities class at CU Denver, to teach students about how to build, grow, and sustain a music economy and to identify how they can best have a role, including simply being the best musicians they can within it, to leading efforts to making it happen within their own communities. He mentions “Denver and Colorado have so many cool things happening within their music economies, so they make the perfect ‘lab’ for us to learn in”.

One project completed in the class was to evaluate the economy of the City of Arvada through the Hometown Colorado Initiative (HCI). HCI was developed as a partnership with CU Denver to connect communities in Colorado with the wide-ranging knowledge and academic discipline of the University of Colorado Denver faculty and students to address local issues that advance community livability and quality of life. Tackling Arvada’s music and arts economy was just one of 20+ projects put forward by City staff for CU Denver students to report findings.