The Music Ambassadors: Macon program began on Monday, Oct. 14 with a show in Mercer Village from the band Bombadil.

The program invites musicians to Macon to perform a lunchtime show in Mercer Village as well as a house performance in a historic home within the College Hill Corridor.

This is the first season for the program. The program is funded by the Knight Neighborhood Challenge and works to acquaint musicians with Macon’s music history. Musicians who come to perform through Music Ambassadors get a private tour of Macon along with VIP accommodations.

Tim Regan-Porter, the director of the Center for Collaborative Journalism, pulled this idea together. His vision for the program is to breathe life back into Macon’s music scene. “I think it’s vital to our sense of identity, to Macon’s sense of identity, and to its economic development. We have that remarkable history that no other city has. There’s always been music here, but for the last 20 years, not a lot of people have known. It’s just sort of dried up in terms of national awareness. So this is a way that we’re trying to get that awareness back,” said Regan-Porter.

Music Ambassadors also brings an opportunity for artists to display their work. At the same house concert where Bombadil performed, artist Carol Dodd Porter had a gallery of her paintings. The paintings reflected Porter’s perception of what the world is like today. Her paintings were filled with text to emphasize our social networking and messaging world that we live in.

For more information on the Music Ambassadors: Macon program, look for the print version of The Cluster coming out Oct. 23.