Big Water Creative Arts Center in Petoskey has been offering songwriting and music instruction to elementary and middle school students for seven years. Most recently, they’ve added a “rock band” course that covers everything needed to start a rock band.
Organization President and instructor Pete Kehoe said the group decided to step in because some rural schools have had to cut music from the curriculum.
“A lot of the school districts that we've worked in, Wolverine, Pellston, Alanson, Mancelona, just or are not as affluent as some of the other communities in northern Michigan, and they just don't have the funding,” Kehoe explained.
Kehoe says thanks to donations and a recent grant, elementary and middle school curriculums as well as “differently- abled” programs will start back up in the fall.
“These kids just wake up, it's almost as if you turn the switch on!” he said.
They have also featured music enrichment classes for differently abled adults in the past as well and hope to bring that back in the near future.
Kehoe said they currently have five to six instructors and could use more to grow to more areas in the future.
