The Dr. Brass Elementary School has received $12,000 for music equipment and resources for its students.
The money comes from MusiCounts, a music education charity in Canada, which allocated $1 million worth of instruments, equipment, and resources to 95 schools across Canada through the MusiCounts Band Aid Program.
The Dr. Brass School was one of six in Saskatchewan to receive funding (Bellevue, Leask, Stanley Mission, Muskoday, Saskatoon), and it’s the second time they had received funding, with the other being in 2013 when they received $5,500.
Scott Yemen, the band director at the Dr. Brass School, said it’s humbling to receive the funding, and they are extremely grateful.
“I think it can only enhance what we do, and the students will really enjoy them and appreciate them. I think it will lead us to offer a quality music education program, which is an important part of any school.”
“Music to me is the ultimate multitasker in terms of studies. Music is made up of math, English, and science, and there is a physical aspect to it, and there is a social aspect, and it covers multiple intelligence in children. It gives them a safe space to be creative,” he continued. “Not everybody is going to feel safe feel being creative athletically or creative with a pencil, so it gives a safe space for kids to work in group and work on personal relationships.”
Yemen said that they applied for the grant back in November.
“To put the grant together, we had to inventory our instruments and give a description to the school and the demographics and why we felt that the accounts grant would be appropriate for us,” he said. “Dr. Brass is in a unique situation as we transition to the academy model at our schools with our lifestyles in dance, hockey, and fine art. We saw some need there, and also a general music teacher is kind of gone the way of the past. Schools used to have a dedicated elementary music teacher. Still, now those responsibilities are being taken on by classroom teachers. When you don’t have a dedicated specialist, you don’t know where to apply. Budget money is tight, so one of the real needs we saw was to improve the infrastructure of our elementary education program.”
Yemen said that they have already started to receive some of the music equipment they have ordered.
“We don’t have a lot of elementary equipment as it is. We had a few old maracas, a few old rhythms sticks kicking around, a couple of tambourines for our elementary kids,” he said. “Our band program is pretty well stocked, but for the individual school itself, we just didn’t have a lot of those elementary instruments. With us offering some popular music at the middle years level, a drum set is one of the things we’ve purchased some backline equipment like a sound system, amplifiers for guitars, basses, microphones, keyboards. We also ordered some large therapeutic drums for some of our programmings.
