Toronto/Abbotsford – Canada’s leading music education charity, MusiCounts, is thrilled to announce that 74 schools across Canada will receive $1 million worth of musical instruments, equipment, and gear via its school funding programs — the MusiCounts Band Aid Program and the MusiCounts Slaight Family Foundation Innovation Fund.
This includes Chief Dan George Middle School in Abbotsford.
Since 1997, the MusiCounts Band Aid Program has been providing under-resourced schools with grants to keep school music programs alive. This is the first year of investment through the MusiCounts Slaight Family Innovation Fund stream, which supports schools with up to $20,000 for culturally-relevant or technology-forward programming. While MusiCounts has been supporting these types of programs for decades, this new funding stream will empower the success of approaches to music education that exist outside of mainstream practice, including Indigenous drumming, steel pan percussion, Hip Hop, and music production.
As students arrive back in the classroom, school music education across the country is in a critical state of disrepair. Many school music programs are under-resourced as they try to adapt to the evolving needs and interests of students. 58 of the 2024 MusiCounts School Funding recipient schools identified that the success of their program hinges on receiving a MusiCounts grant. Though MusiCounts is proud of the positive impact it makes in schools across the country, it’s only able to support about 1 in every 5 schools that applied for help this year.
