THE CHICAGO ACADEMY OF MUSIC will offer free music education through multiple methods of instruction, and will be available mostly for children from a low socioeconomic status (SES). The programs offered include weekly musical instruction, daily after-school group music classes, and specialized year-round workshops. While the priorities and goals of each program will differ, they will all serve the mission of the academy: to transform the lives of young people by instilling positive values through primarily free music education.
Proficiency in a musical instrument will be a major result of the lessons offered at the academy, but it is not the ultimate goal.The skills and values that a music student must develop in order to become fluent are transferable to a wide variety of fields, and continue to prepare that individual towards success in all areas of life, even if he or she does not become a career musician.Thus, a child’s entire life will be transformed in a positive way through the study of a musical instrument at the Chicago Academy of Music. These children typically do not receive the opportunity to participate in the arts – or any other creative learning activity that may have positive, lifelong ramifications. This is why the Chicago Academy of Music is particularly interested in recruiting and retaining youth from low SES backgrounds. Studies have repeatedly confirmed the developmental significance of music for youth, with researchers’ findings uncovering its social, emotional, and cognitive benefits.
1. Studies have uncovered that children from a low SES background enjoy an even more profound student achievement reward due to involvement in the arts as compared to their middle-class a upper-class counterparts.
2. Research findings have proven that the younger a student begins his or her musical education, the better their academic prowess in their later years.
A music program alone cannot meet the needs of a low SES community. In most cases, families find it difficult enough to coordinate their movements without the added stress of ensuring a child gets to his or her lessons.
This is why the Chicago Academy of Music is so much more than just a school for music, and it all starts with the CAM café. The CAM café will be an all-organic restaurant, providing home-cooked style meals made on site. Since our schools will be located near food deserts, we will provide healthy food that is easy to recreate at home. Each item on the menu will come with a recipe card to enable visitors to make healthier choices when cooking for themselves. As resources grow, the café will also offer catering services.
The objective for the café is two-fold: to provide a safe and welcoming place for the community to explore sorely needed healthy dining options, and to serve as the main financial support for CAM’s other programs. As much of the produce as possible will be cultivated on site using both hydroponics and seasonal outdoor gardens. Honey will be provided by an on-site apiary, which will also act as an educational opportunity for students and aid in the effort to stop the growing problem of honeybee loss.
For families with more than one child, even the convenience of Cam café might not be enough to keep them coming to the Academy. In these cases, there is CAM kidcare. Kidcare is an afterschool/daycare program meant to service families who have one child in the music program, and want to centralize their family by enrolling their other children in the same facility. The programs are geared towards matching and encouraging an individual’s physical and mental development. A strategy of learning through play will keep the children interested and enthusiastic about expanding their cognitive and physical limits. Along with daycare activities, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Mandarin will be an integral part of the overall educational schema.
As well as working with the children of the community, CAM will offer services to adults. Free wireless Internet and work centers that support both MAC and PC will be available in the cafe. All of our employees, in each sector of CAM, will receive training to help them further their personal goals and offer more economic mobility to each individual involved in our programs.
All of these resources will offer continued learning experiences for the children in CAM as well as CAMkidcare alongside the café’s main purpose of sustaining funding for free music education—part of the business model that makes CAM an excellent candidate for funding.
