Author and community arts leader Matt Hinsley will speak about his 30 years building performance and education programs through Austin Classical Guitar. He’ll share stories of impact and transformation through music as well as lessons from his forthcoming book, his ninth, entitled The Spirit Economy.
About our Speaker:
Dr. Matthew Hinsley received the 2020 Margaret Perry Award for Excellence in Education, was a 2019 recipient of the National Guild for Community Arts Education Milestone Award for more than twenty years of community service in the arts. He was named Public Citizen of the Year in 2017 by the Texas Statewide Division of the National Association of Social Workers, and was a winner of a 2015 Austin Under 40 award. Hinsley has worked as a community arts organizer in Central Texas since 1996.
As Executive Director of Austin Classical Guitar (ACG), Dr. Hinsley has raised more than ten million dollars in support of broad concert, community engagement, and educational programming, building the nation’s largest classical guitar nonprofit organization. In 2015 he joined the faculty at the University of Texas College of Fine Arts to teach courses in arts entrepreneurship and business management in the arts. In 2021 Hinsley opened ACG’s first concert and creative learning center in central Austin, called The Rosette.
Dr. Hinsley is founder and a lead author of the ACG curriculum and music library that, paired with extensive direct service, has transformed classroom guitar education in public schools across the United States reaching tens of thousands of students. The curriculum, which is now used internationally, is in service in over fifty Austin-area schools including for-credit programs at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, multiple Juvenile Justice centers, forty-five Texas districts, and forty US states.
Dr. Hinsley was trained as a classical guitarist and vocalist at the Interlochen Arts Academy, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the University of Texas at Austin. He has written eight books including Form & Essence: A Guide to Practicing Truth, Classical Guitar for Young People, Creativity to Community: Arts Nonprofit Success One Coffee at a Time, and the film-optioned fantasy series Tinder & Flint.
