About Us
One Mic Project
One mic can amplify a voice.
A voice can tell a story.
A story can change the world.
One Mic Project uses portable recording technology to transform any space into a recording studio and any person into a songwriter. Using teaching techniques developed over the past decade running songwriting and composition programs around the world, Chris Cresswell helps individuals and groups access their own inner creative selves, using self-expression as a tool for self-empowerment.
Workshop participants learn and practice the basics of songwriting and music production, gaining the foundation to create their own lyrics and music. Introductions to songwriting and musical composition provide participants with the skills to experiment with both group and individual creative musical production.
Chris Cresswell
Chris Cresswell is a teaching artist, composer, and sound artist based in Syracuse, NY. His educational philosophy is to meet students where they are at and elevate them from there.
An exceptional teaching artist, Cresswell has worked in Syracuse City Schools, with Red House Arts Center, CNY Jazz Central, and a variety of other settings. In 2014 he helped launch the songwriting and recording program at Lake of the Woods and Greenwoods Summer Camp, an experience that lead him to start the One Mic Project. He lead the program from 2014-2018, and again in 2022.
Through Great Lakes Guitar Society, One Mic Project has received support from Arts in Corrections NYS, a regrant program of NYSCA, facilitated by Wave Farm with the support of NYS DOCCS. Cresswell has taught composition at the Birmingham Junior Conservatoire, with the Young Composers Project (UK), and with Society for New Music’s Young Composers Corner (US). He has presented on his teaching artistry at SCI Conferences, CiTi BOCES, and the 2026 ARTs + Change Conference at the University of Rochester.
His passion for youth development led him to work for Fiver Children’s Foundation from 2018-2021, a non profit that provides experiences that challenge and builds relationships that nurture so that youth from systemically under-resourced communities in New York can create their own positive futures.
A graduate of Syracuse University and the Birmingham Conservatoire, Cresswell is currently pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He has previously worked as an adjunct lecturer at Onondaga Community College and as an adjunct professor at Syracuse University and Le Moyne College. When not doing musical things, he can be found running the streets and trails of Central New York, watching St. Louis Cardinals baseball or Syracuse basketball, and spending time with his wife Amber and their young family.
Find out more about Chris’s artistic work at: www.chriscresswellmusic.com
