My colleague Jay Newman, along with several other Jumpsters, recently helped organize our annual Martin Luther King Jr. service day event. It's a day when we close the office to take part in improving and supporting our local community. With a new video highlighting the wonderful events of the day hot of the presses, Jay asked to share some thoughts with the hybrid community...

Each year Jump dedicates Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a day of service. This year, we supported education in the arts by collaborating with two great organizations: Music National Service and the Oakland School for the Arts. Participants (including Jumpsters) taught music to children from the local community and painted MLK-inspired murals that are being displayed at elementary schools around town. We finished the day with a foot-stomping 100+ person performance of Bill Wither’s soul classic, "Lean on Me."

Joining MNS and the Oakland School for the Arts was such a perfect fit for Jump. Given the diverse mindsets we need in order to do our work well, it doesn't surprise me in the least that our office is filled with folks who call themselves musicians, artists, performers, and makers, alongside (and as a part of) their daily roles as hybrid strategists. Just on the music side alone, we were able to build a band with a full rhythm section, string section, and horn section for a jam session recently!

Glance at the video above to see an example of hybridity making a difference, as musicians and artists and servants from all walks of life came together to support arts education and the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. As Donn Harris, the executive director of the Oakland School for the Arts, shouted to pump up the crowd, "creativity, innovation, and the arts is the language of the millennium." We couldn’t agree more.