The People’s Music School Opens A South Side Location

Choir students perform at the Greater South Side Winter Concert. Photo provided by the People’s Music School.
Choir students perform at the Greater South Side Winter Concert. Photo provided by the People’s Music School.

The People’s Music School Opens A South Side Location

By Tia Carol Jones

The People’s Music School has opened a location at 5401 S. State that will serve its Greater South side students. The location will enable the tuition-free music school to serve more students and expand its reach and ability to engage with more families in the community.

“It has been exciting for me to launch the Greater South Side (GSS) program and guide, its 10x growth,” the People’s Music School Chief Program Officer Natalie Butler said in a release. “As we prepare to celebrate a decade of offering our amazing GSS program to Chicago’s Southside youth, it's great to finally have a home we can call our own. Our beautiful new location at 5410 S State Street will serve our current 180 students in the kind of educational setting they deserve to experience, and ensure we have the space to offer hundreds of more children the opportunity to participate in our transformational after school music program.”

The People’s Music School was founded in 1976 by Dr. Rita Simó in Uptown. The mission of the school is to provide access to music education to students, without financial barriers. The school aims to see students grow musically, emotionally, intellectually and socially, as they develop a foundation of purpose, responsibility, self-esteem and resilience. The programs include general music, music theory, private and group lessons and ensembles, as well as Service, Leadership, Artistry and Mentorship (SLAM), which is geared toward advanced, older students. Students receive an instrument of their own to practice with at home.

The People’s Music School President and CEO Miriam Goldberg Owens said the faculty are all part-time, paid instructors and they all have degrees in either music education or performance. She said they are highly qualified professionals working with the students. She said students receive about four hours of instruction each week in an intensive after school program. She said the students learn how to work collaboratively as a team through ensemble instruction.

In 2016, the People’s Music School launched a program at the Gary Comer Youth Center in Greater Grand Crossing. There were 15 students in the program at the time. Now, the People’s Music School serves more than 180 students from 31 communities on the South side. The South side location will have nine classrooms for music instruction, storage rooms for instruments, faculty and staff offices, a faculty resource center, a kitchen and restrooms, as well as elevator access which will result in improved accessibility.

Goldberg Owens said opening the new facility has been a long time coming. Throughout the years, the music school has moved around the South side and mostly relied on free space. She said with the growth of the program there was a need to create stability for the program. She said there was a year long search to find a location that would meet the needs of the program that would be big enough and would be convenient for families. She said the new facility showed investment and commitment to families on the South side.

Goldberg Owens said that the new facility is an investment in growth for the People’s Music School. She added that she would like to see the location host weekend programming. Returning families were invited to see the facility a couple of weeks ago. She said seeing the students and their families in the space was one of the most inspiring and touching moments. She said they were excited and relieved to know the music school made a commitment of a five-year lease on the location.

“There was this simultaneous feeling of like we’re home now, but also it’s still familiar and it’s the things and the people and the music that we know and love and now it’s in a place that really can be ours,” she said. Owens said the South side location is the first time since the mid-1990s that the People’s Music School has made an investment to create its own physical space.

For more information about the People’s Music School, visit peoplesmusicschool.org.

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