It’s a familiar story, at least as old as I am: across America’s public schools, arts education programs have been slashed as a cost saving measure, leaving private systems and non-profits
to fill in the gaps. In my estimation, one non-profit happens to be
filling in that gap rather well, doing so in a way that benefits
students, teachers, schools, and the private sector all at the same
time.
This program is called, quite simply, the Lennon Bus; think of it
as a highly technical realization of Partridge Family values:
essentially a recording studio on wheels (though these days, it’s much
more than that), the Lennon Bus tours the country, making appearances in
school districts and after-school programs—many of them severely
impoverished.
More than an arts/engineering intensive, the Lennon Bus aims to teach
children the importance of team work, focus, discipline, and goal-based
learning—and they do all of this by means of a technologically
up-to-date multimedia facility. The Lennon Bus also seeks to demonstrate
just how valuable such student programs can be to school
administrators; having shown off its wares, the Lennon Bus often
proceeds to facilitate the donation of the necessary equipment to set up
such a facility within the boundaries of a school (indeed, partnering
with their sponsors, the Lennon Bus donated over $30,000 worth of gear
to schools over the 2014-2015 school year).
Why are we highlighting this within the online pages of Forbes.com,
you might ask? Because this program would never enjoy its currently wide
scope without the partnership of major brands and corporations;
partnering with the Lennon Bus allows a brands such as Apple or Avid to
tap into greater marketplaces, giving them a vital presence within a
school system often stuck on antiquated operating systems and hardware
facilities.
In
other words, not only does the program inspire students to learn,
teachers to teach, and administrators to arm themselves with valuable
equipment, it promotes awareness of particular brands, effectively
hooking entirely new generations of consumers onto their products. Yes,
there is a capitalistic (and perhaps opportunistic) undercurrent to
program, but without the support of these companies (ranging from Apple
to Montblanc), the program wouldn’t work as well as it does.
Indeed, it works rather well. Beginning
its trek through America in 1998, the Lennon Bus originally started as
an outgrowth of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest that begun a year
prior. “Originally I had thought that this was just going to be a spring
promotion,” Executive Director Brian Rothschild told me. But everything
changed when the bus made an appearance on Good Morning America. Along
with Wyclef Jean and Joan Osborne, Brian had the last minute idea to
feature students from New York City public schools on the program.
Synergy followed: during the course of the taping, Jean and Osborne
helped the students write an original song, revealing “it in the last
five minutes of the show”
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