VH1 Saves the Music at Indianapolis Public Schools

Over 1,000 young flautists, cellists, violinists, and percussionists filled the floor of Indianapolis’ Conseco Fieldhouse last Thursday in a loud demonstration of just how far music education has come in a public school system that couldn’t afford it ten years ago.

Thanks to grants exceeding $1 million donated by the VH1 Save the Music Foundation and local cable affiliate Bright House Networks, the band plays on at the Indianapolis Public School district.

It’s one of over 30 public school districts, many urban and all hard hit by budget cuts, where the foundation is putting cash into a counterattack against the decimation of public music education in America.

To date, the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization funded mostly by large corporations and local sponsors, has donated over $45 million in new musical instruments to public schools in more than 100 cities. In 2000, Indianapolis needed the cash as much as any public school system in the nation. Today, it’s the foundation’s crown jewel.

“We’ve met the goal here,” Rob Davidson, Program Director says. A decade ago, “IPS elementary school music programs were gone. There was nothing in place. We set forth a plan, over several years to get music programs in about 40 elementary schools, and as of this year, every school in IPS has a music program. Every school has a music teacher and has new instruments. This is a way to celebrate that,” he said of Thursday’s event.

It was a celebration far more valuable than the free admission family and friends paid to gain entrance to an impressive downtown spectacle: 600 band students amassed to one side of the floor and 400 or so strings students to the other. They volleyed arrangements back and forth: “Hard Rock Highway,” The “Main Theme” from Star Wars, an abbreviated version of the “William Tell Overture” and other tunes both modern and classical. Kris Allen (at left), last year’s American Idol winner, even stopped by to perform his platinum hit “Live Like We’re Dying.” Allen's publicized cameo might have grabbed headlines prior to the show, but it was all about the show the kids put on after.

“It was awesome,” says IPS music instructor Michele Pickard. The 20-year classroom vet, who teaches strings to 5th and 6th graders at two schools per day and five per week, has witnessed VH1 Save the Music’s impact firsthand. She wouldn’t have been hired within the district without it, and she isn’t sure how many of her 100 students, nearly all present at Conseco on Thursday, would pick up an instrument if it weren’t provided by the organization. One thing she is sure of is music education’s considerable impact on students.

“Music gives them an outlet for emotions,” Pickard says of IPS students, 78 percent of whom qualify for free lunch, according IPS' official "State of the District" report. “They develop real camaraderie, almost like a family unit. A lot of them pursue it beyond high school, a lot take their experience, especially with string instruments, and they learn to play guitar. Many of my kids take their violins to church. It gives them an opportunity to participate in the community.”

VH1 Save the Music is all about “preparing well rounded citizens,” says Davidson. “Right now there’s a lot of emphasis and accountability on testing and too often schooling gets narrowed down to the tested subjects.”

The schools at IPS are getting narrowed right this minute. IPS cut 3 varsity football programs at the end of 2009, and the 2010 IPS budget calls for total cuts of $26 million, according to the “State of the District” report. That’s 100 teaching jobs, 20 school police officers and 20 custodians, among others laid off because of the cuts, according to WIBC Indianapolis.

But thanks in large part to VH1 Save the Music, elementary arts and music programs aren’t going anywhere in Indianapolis. Just as a single cello can be used in a classroom for over 20 years (“as long as it doesn’t get crushed,” says Pickard), this organization is all about sustainable music making. The organization buys its instruments in reduced-price packages through local retailers. It fosters a long-term relationship between those retailers and schools. It makes sure schools hire qualified teachers and keeps tabs on the music programs it supports by checking in frequently and demanding regular progress reports.

No report coming out of IPS has been as promising as the one that blared out of Conseco Fieldhouse on Thursday night. If none of the 1,100 kids in attendance knew who Rossini was before they picked up an instrument, plenty know now.

“Introduce them to other things that they’re not familiar with, and before you know it, they’ve got it," Pickard says of the more accessible music that she teaches to IPS students.

Photos by Rob Davidson/VH1 Save the Music Foundation.