The Song Room is an organisation that exists to deliver arts and music curriculum in schools that currently have little to no access. Founded in 1999, their vision is “All Australian children should have the opportunity to participate in music and the arts”.

Tammy Schlitz is the Song Room’s Fundraising & Communications Manager, who says she was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by music and the arts, “I was just dumbfounded when I found out that’s not something children necessarily have access to anymore.”

Currently in Australia, only one in four children have the opportunity to participate in music and arts curriculum in primary school. So The Song Room focuses its push on this age group, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“We get a lot of refugees who come from war-torn countries and have seen and experienced more than any person ever should, and at such a young age. What music can often do is level the playing field…”

“…particularly for new arrivals or people from different backgrounds. They may not be fantastic at English, but because music is such a global language, that is often where they can really shine, ” Tammy says.

“Then you see that flow into other areas. When kids are happy and engaged in their schooling, it flows into their other subjects,” she says. Results show that it helps with emotional well-being, social skills, numeracy, literacy, and many other aspects of their life.”

The Song Room’s core program is their face-to-face program, delivered by a ‘teaching artist’, who goes into a classroom, working with a generalist teacher to deliver an arts program.

This could be music-based, such as: singing, drumming, ukulele and even body percussion. They also run programs in dance, drama and visual arts.This is all at no cost to the children’s family.

“We gather our funding from a number of different sources. We rely heavily on public and corporate donations and very limited government funding, and we do ask for a small contribution form the school itself,” she says.

At the end of each semester the parents and community are invited to a performance by the students, so they can see just what their children have achieved, “The more involvement they have with the child’s education, the better the outcome,” Tammy says.

The Song Room tailors their face-to-face programs for each school and gives the teaching artists a lot of freedom. A great example of this is the work teaching artist Ed Gould is doing at Yipirinya School in Alice Springs.

Yipirinya is a school comprised entirely of indigenous children, where the students are taught four different languages! Although Ed doesn’t speak those languages himself, whenever possible he incorporates them into the class activities and music. The Song Room is currently running a Pozible campaign (see below) to raise funding to keep their program running at the school.

The Song Room and Yipirinya School are also working with the ‘Bush Bands Bash’. It’s a massive event on the NT calendar where indigenous musicians from all-over come together to perform.

Tammy says with pride, “We’ll be getting the kids to perform up there with them. Having them work towards something like that, and giving them that opportunity to perform with some of their idols is amazing.”

Unfortunately The Song Room can’t deliver their face-to-face program in every school, so they have developed an online resource program called ‘Arts Live’. It’s available free to all registered teachers in Australia and is aligned with the Australian curriculum.

Funding permitting, they also run the Creative Community Project, where The Song Room and the teaching artist get a small community of people working on a project such as: creating postcards, writing stories of the town, even writing school songs with a performance to accompany it.

 “Just seeing the difference it makes in the children is incredible.”

You can donate to the Pozible campaign by visiting the following link: http://pozi.be/yulay

All photos courtesy of Yipirinya School.