EPIC MUSIC ACADEMY
Passionate about teaching music, Alistair Mawhinney enjoys sharing his love with children who might otherwise miss out.
Alistair Mawhinney brings music to children at risk of missing out.
The benefits of learning music are many and varied – enhanced brain function, the chance to improve social skills and the enjoyment of a creative outlet are just some of the positive outcomes. But for many kids, it’s difficult to stick with learning an instrument; common reasons include inconvenience, uninspiring teaching or a prohibitive cost.
Alistair Mawhinney wanted to remove those barriers for kids in Palmerston North, so four years ago he established Epic Music Academy, a social enterprise that offers accessible, affordable tuition and makes music as fun as possible. The academy provides music lessons in small groups at schools around the city. The lessons take place during school hours and on school grounds to make it as easy as possible for students to attend.
The idea for Epic Music Academy was inspired by Wellington’s Goodtime Music Academy, where Mawhinney worked for seven years. Initially, Mawhinney and his wife,
Emily moved to Palmerston North to establish a church, and starting the academy offered a way to supplement their income. But the biggest driving factor was to create opportunities for children who might otherwise not be able to learn music, so they set up the business as a social enterprise with the aim of accommodating kids who can’t afford lessons.
“The goal is to be able to provide 10 per cent of our tuition for free,” explains Mawhinney. “So say you have 30 kids learning in a school, we’d teach an extra three kids from the school who wouldn’t be able to afford it. We’re not 100 per cent where we want to be, we’re still working towards it, but that’s the ultimate goal.”
Epic Music Academy started in three schools teaching around 90 pupils, and has grown to teach at 18 schools with approximately 900 students. Much of the academy’s success can be put down to making the learning process fun for kids. “One of the things we’re passionate about is creating new ways of teaching, being at the front end of innovating music tuition for New Zealand,” Mawhinney says.
It’s a far cry from the style of teaching that Mawhinney experienced as a child, where his drum lessons consisted of playing along to some songs in a tutor’s garage.
While Mawhinney says he “can’t give away all the secrets”, some important aspects of his approach include group classes, an engaging curriculum, incorporating video learning to allow students to follow along with tutors at home and giving children opportunities to perform for an audience.
Epic Music Academy has also developed a Music Foundation Programme for Year 1 and 2 students, taking this age group through the basics of music. “What we’ve found with the five- and six-year-olds is they would start on an instrument then after about a month or two they’d plateau and they wouldn’t get any better. A lot of them would just quit after about six months,” explains Mawhinney. The foundation programme allows young children to experiment with a range of instruments. “They go through a one-to-two year programme until they’re old enough to be able to stick at an instrument, progress and not get stuck.”
The Epic curriculum is inspired and informed by Mawhinney’s years of teaching and observing which methods work best. His experience with Goodtime was particularly beneficial. “I had the privilege of being part of that company from when they had 30 kids, right the way through to when we had closer to 1,200 students. So I saw all the ups and downs, the things that worked, the things that didn’t. So when we came to start our own thing, we had a really clear idea of what we wanted to do.”
While Mawhinney loves welcoming new students from all kinds of backgrounds, he’s particularly passionate about finding children who wouldn’t have ever considered taking up music. “If you’ve got a kid from a musical family, chances are they’re going to do music. They’ll probably be good at it and they’ll enjoy it,” says Mawhinney.
“But the stories we love the most are from the families who don’t have any musical background; their kids have no idea that they might be interested in music. And through seeing a school concert or seeing their friends play or whatever it might be, they say, ‘I think I could give this a go’, and they give it a go, and they discover they love it. Those are the true success stories.”