Common Ground On the Hill

We are a multicultural community of musicians, artists, writers, lecturers, actors, and dancers sharing skills with students of all ages and with one another. In this way, we believe that we can improve ourselves, our communities and our world as we meet, share and celebrate our arts and cultures on "common ground."

Common Ground on the Hill offers two consecutive but separate weeks of workshops in music and visual arts, concerts, dances, dramatic performances, lectures, art shows and more. These workshops and other events feature professional musicians, artists, dancers, actors, writers and thinkers from a wide variety of disciplines who hail from all over the United States and beyond, and who come to Common Ground on the Hill as instructors to teach and perform. Common Ground on the Hill also enrolls a body of students who come to participate in workshops, attend concerts, play music, dance, paint, weave, make pottery, write, engage in dialog, learn, share, and much, much more. Adults and teenagers can take workshops. Children ages 5 to 12 can participate in World Village, our activities camp on the campus of McDaniel College.

Common Ground on the Hill also offers concerts, festivals, and events throughout the year in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Mission Statement

To provide the opportunity to teach and to study various musical instruments and art forms representing various ethnic and cultural traditions. To sponsor a series of musical and artistic events from cultural and ethnic groups who are marginalized in our society or who are in conflict with each other and listen to their voices, e.g., Indigenous People, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, Euro-Americans etc. To encourage and facilitate dialogue, by way of the arts among different cultural traditions, in order to discover that this artistic common ground unites us, and that, as a result, the world might become a more human place.