A musician, an educator, a community organizer, and a spiritual leader, Adam Tutor wears many hats. “All of these things are centered around helping others express their highest potential, whether it be through music, through spirit, through community, through education,” he explains.
Currently, he leads San Antonio Sound Garden, a nonprofit focused on building the educational pipeline for the music industry. They strive to give youth ages 13 to 30 “the tools and the belief systems and the skill sets to rise into a career in the music industry, should that be something they choose for their lives.”
Adam started playing music at 13, the same age as many of the kids he now teaches. “Jazz began as this way for me to express the deeper parts of myself that I couldn’t in words or anything else,” he remembers.
His journey since then has been a learning process. “A lot of it has been figuring out what I’m good at and what I’m not good at, what I really really love and what I kind of like and what I really don’t like. Getting closer and closer to molding that piece of clay into the sculpture that I am envisioning.”
Working with kids gives him an opportunity to see his own personal growth. “You get to experience mirrors of yourself every time you’re around a child,” he says. They teach him just as he teaches them.
In addition to heading San Antonio Sound Garden, Adam also leads after school music programs for kids. Since becoming a member at The Impact Guild, Adam has connected with Community Curator Amber Meegan and her kids. “Amber and her kiddos joined with me on my musical project, and it was really a joy to be with them and to create a sense of intimacy with music and exploration.”
Connections like this illustrate the culture of support that makes The Impact Guild special to Adam. At the end of last year, when he began to look for a place to work, he knew he wanted to find somewhere that felt like home, without the distractions of actually being at home. The Impact Guild met that criteria, along with being “affordable and heart-centered and in a neighborhood.”
“I think people are raising each other up here. That’s the feeling I get. A desire to support one another, and not just in thought, but in deed,” he says.
He felt that support recently when he was given the opportunity to practice his pitch for San Antonio Sound Garden during 1 Million Cups, an event hosted as part of San Antonio Entrepreneurship Week’s Impact Day at The Impact Guild. Put on weekly by Launch SA, 1 Million Cups brings entrepreneurs together to give each other feedback and encouragement.
While this event is a chance for entrepreneurs to work on their business, it’s also about building community, a similar mindset to that Adam has found at The Impact Guild. “There’s not this busy corporate energy or people who are just about making a buck. It’s really community-oriented,” he says. “I also think it’s great that there’s an air of studiousness without being stuffiness. The energy is still flowing here and people are getting stuff done.”