PARKSCAPES

About the Work OVERVIEW The Regent Park School of Music (RPSM) is a community music school in Toronto that gives over 1,000 young people aged 3-18 a quality music education in high-priority neighborhoods in Toronto. These are typically kids who wouldn’t otherwise have access to instruments or lessons. With arts and music funding being slashed by 50%, the school needed a way to become less reliant on the government for funding. They needed to find a way to sustain themselves. OBJECTIVES Our first objective was to ensure that RPSM had the funds they needed to continue changing lives through music. The second objective was to raise awareness for RPSM. If we could bring attention to the school and the great work it was doing, it might prompt more people to give. BIG IDEA Our idea was to create an album of original tracks with students from the school. But instead of the general public, we targeted musicians. Every time a musician samples a song from our album, royalties and residuals are paid to the school for the life of the song. BRINGING THE IDEA TO LIFE We partnered with Grammy winning producer Frank Dukes to compose the 11-track album called “Parkscapes”. RPSM students played all the instruments on the album, which would be available online via Dukes’ Kingsway Music Library site – a popular hub for musicians looking for samples to use in their music. We launched the album from Frank Dukes’ Instagram account (77K followers), posting videos and audio samples promoting Parkscapes. Artists and Influencers like Shawn Mendes, Metro Boomin and Boi 1-Da loved our idea, and shared our posts organically to the tune of over 62 million followers. RESULTS When we finally got news that we’d been sampled, we couldn’t have predicted that it would be by the biggest pop star on earth. Taylor Swift had used one of our compositions “Summer in the South” as the basis of her song “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” from her new album, “Lover”. Numerous domestic and international publications picked up the story. Over 130 pieces of earned media reaching almost 3.49 billion viewers – all unpaid. Taylor’s album was streamed over 226 million times in its first week alone. It became the biggest selling album of 2019, and the only one to sell one million “pure” copies. Dream Works even licensed “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” for the movie “Abominable”, resulting in more royalties for the school. The kids who directly benefit from the program were now helping to sustain it. And with every new stream, download and license come new royalties that will generate even more funding. By targeting musicians, not only had we successfully raised funds and awareness for RPSM, we had created a sustainable donation model that would give back to the school forever.