Dig + Disconnect Workshops - Art of the Dig

Dig + Disconnect is Miyagi Records’ weekly Friday workshop series built around slow listening, creative practice, and community time.

Each session opens up a different entry point into music culture — from digging and taste-making to open decks, zine-making, guest selectors, and hands-on skill-building. It’s for collectors, DJs, artists, listeners, and anyone looking to step away from the scroll and reconnect with sound in real life.

RSVP required
Cost = FREE

=== about the workshop ===
Introducing Art of the Dig — a new hands-on workshop from Miyagi Education built around learning how to find what moves you.

This is for curious listeners, newer collectors, future DJs, and anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed staring at a wall of records. Across the session, we’ll slow down and work through the process of digging with more intention: reading covers, labels, credits, condition, and context; listening closely; comparing what we expected to what we actually hear; and building a small stack that reflects your own taste and curiosity.

The workshop uses our Stacks & Paths format: curated crates, guided prompts, listening stations, and time to ask questions or keep digging after the structured portion ends. You’ll learn how records connect through mood, era, region, rhythm, texture, story, and use — whether you’re collecting for home, searching for samples, building your ear, or thinking about DJing for the first time.

Art of the Dig also serves as a light introduction to some of the listening and selection habits used in DJ 101. We won’t be teaching beatmatching or gear technique here. Instead, we’ll focus on the part that comes first: choosing records, trusting your ear, understanding context, and learning how one sound might lead to the next.

=== about the artist ===
TREW is a Chicago-based artist, archivist, educator, DJ, and founder of Miyagi Records, a South Side record shop and music education space rooted in community, culture, and deep listening. His work centers around records as more than objects: they are carriers of memory, history, identity, and connection. Through years of digging, buying collections, studying sound, and building relationships with DJs, collectors, artists, families, and everyday music lovers, TREW has developed a practice that blends crate knowledge with storytelling and cultural context. His approach to record collecting is less about chasing rarity for rarity’s sake, and more about learning how to recognize what moves you, what teaches you, and what connects you to a larger lineage of sound. In Art of the Dig, TREW guides participants through the deeper practice of finding music with intention. The workshop explores how to move beyond algorithms, obvious classics, and price-tag thinking, offering practical tools for discovering records through curiosity, listening, instinct, research, and personal taste.