Band in a Bus

Throughout COVID, we've seen just how crucial the performing arts are for the development of the next generation of rockstars. From social emotional growth, to 21st century skills and old-school peopling skills, access to music, dance and everything between can be a catalyst for positive social change. Let me step off my soapbox. We would use the Elevate Prize funding to put a really solid technology platform behind our Band in a Box program. We've sent out over 3500+ boxes of instruments, impacting 4000+ students across multiple states and the band marches on. To be able to include a well crafted, engaging and free curriculum platform that saves the music teacher with no instruments, and no clue about how to keep their program alive, or for the startup music nonprofit desperate for material that keeps students in their programs thriving when there isn't enough hours in the day--can make all the difference. We can build the biggest, free-ist and most badass band class ever, together with resources provided by the Elevate Prize.    

Hello. My name is Nick Rose and I am the Executive Director of Band in a Bus. The first song I ever learned was Brick House by the Commodores. Don't know how I knew that song at age 4, but it's a crowd pleaser. 

Music has always been humming along in the background during key moments in my personal development and career. 

In 2015, I gave up a promising corporate career to pursue music full-time. 

Like a lot of my musical peers, I did not succeed. But on this journey, I discovered a passion for non-profits and their pursuits in making our world a better place.    

I found that I wanted to make our world a better place by tackling equity and access to performing arts resources problems faced by communities around the world.

To this end, I founded my own non-profit, Band in a Bus in 2018. Our purpose is to help schools and community organizations rock out on a shoestring budget by providing instruments, curriculum and staffing. To date, we've donated over $50000 worth of instruments, impacted 4000+ students and have worked with multiple school districts and community organizations throughout the US.  

Communities around the world struggle with providing access to quality performing arts content & development tools for their young people. And research emphatically shows, the arts are an amazing academic & social emotional development tool for young people--when used on a consistent basis. To combat this equity problem, Band in a Bus founded a program during COVID called, Band in a Box. Our Band in a Box program has donated thousands of instruments to our public schools and various organizations in the past year. The feedback we receive daily is, we love the boxes, and instruments, but what do we do with them? After a little digging, we've found that most music programs in the tri-state suffer from high turnover rates and limited access to funds. This sets most programs up to fail every couple years, which makes it impossible for students to receive any real benefit from these classes. We want to combat these issues by building the first Khan Academy for the performing arts. A curriculum website designed with modern activities, access to instruments, and best practices that'll help music programs start up—rather than start over.

What makes Band in a Box unique is our use of contemporary music and identifying music touch-points with the schools and organizations we serve. We have a generation and a half that have grown up with Youtube, Streaming Platforms, and other content centers that can allow for higher levels of engagement. We take this starting point, and through time-tested teaching methods, build up our programs through the music of today. This process has worked for 3500+ students so far and with the resources provided through this prize, we can amplify our results and finally chisel away at the equity gap facing fledgling music communities around the world.  

With every school, and community organization, we serve. We like to ask them what their needs are. The overwhelming feedback is that they need help coming up with long-term plans and features that their students can access with relatively little effort. As we're developing our Performing Arts Curriculum Platform. Here's where we're at in our project's progress: 

Goals:

Develop a modern curriculum utilizing popular music of today (we already have this underway, expect to have our 1.0 draft completed by June 2021)

Approach a Digital Agency to develop our platform (we’re currently negotiating with MachOne Digital—a group with a history of developing successful education products)

Establish Focus Groups (to do this right, we need more data. We already have a community of music teachers that we can lean on to establish core features)

Build & Test our curriculum platform (we have connections established with arts managers at school districts throughout the tri-state. We can reach over 5000 students in the first week of launch alone)

Gather essential data & feedback (we plan to capture use data that will inform our main features (games, music tools, curriculum generator, quizzes etc.) and standard demographic data which will help us develop further resources)