Culture pour tous

Le Garage à musique

Fine-Tuning Kids’ Lives

Since 2010, kids in the Montreal borough of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve have had access to an unusual educational facility – le Garage à musique (Music Garage). With this initiative run by lawyer/mediator Hélène Sioui-Trudel, la Fondation du Dr Julien may hope to launch a few garage bands, but it’s mainly interested in training responsible young citizens and giving them the tools they need to cope with the realities of life.

In this disadvantaged neighbourhood, the aim is to combine learning and playing music with homework assistance and clinical services based on the social pediatrics approach practised for many years by Dr. Julien and his team.

Le Garage à musique is still in its infancy, but has established two successful pilot projects and has recently moved into the Foundation’s former premises. It offers kids made-to-measure professional care combined with an educational and social support program in a safe, accessible, creative environment. It gives them an opportunity to acquire technical, personal and social skills through learning and playing music.

Music as part of community-based social pediatrics

La Fondation du Dr Julien was established in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve in the 1990s and now, in 2011, operates two community-based social pediatrics centres in Montreal: le Centre de services préventifs à l'enfance, in Côte-des-Neiges, and le Centre Assistance d'enfant en difficulté, in Hochelaga‑Maisonneuve.

A community-based social pediatrics centre is above all a familiar, welcoming and accessible place rooted in the community. “It’s like home,” says Hélène Sioui-Trudel, who grew up with a piano in the house and wanted the centre to have musical instruments too. “We got a piano and then found volunteers to teach guitar. I thought it was a good thing to make music available to the kids who came to the centre, but I also wanted to make it available to the whole neighbourhood.” And so was born the idea of creating le Garage à musique.

Sioui-Trudel has been closely involved with the Foundation since 2006 and has been managing its operations since February 2011. Part Aboriginal, on her mother’s side, she studied criminology and law and in her work was exposed to land claims and human rights issues. She has long embraced the social pediatrics approach, which involves everyone in the network surrounding the kids targeted by the Foundation’s programs: parents, teachers, psychologists, doctors, lawyers, social workers, police officers, etc.

A highly successful pilot project

After a shaky start, le Garage à musique really started to take shape in 2009 with a pilot project involving some 200 students from Saint-Nom-de-Jésus elementary school in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Sioui-Trudel felt it was important for all students, from Grades 1 to 6, to be allowed to participate, so that nobody would be excluded.

For seven weeks, from April to June 2009, the teachers took their students once a week to the Samajam percussion school a few minutes walk away. The students’ year-end concert in June 2009 attracted a standing-room-only crowd at Maisonneuve Market's big top. It was a resounding success and the enthusiasm was palpable.

New funding enabled the Foundation to continue the pilot project in the 2009-2010 school year with the same partners: Saint-Nom-de-Jésus elementary school and Samajam, which gave group drumming classes on the djembe – definitely one of the most fun parts of le Garage à musique.

Le Garage à musique sets its sights on the Ovila Pelletier Building

In November 2010, le Garage à musique took a new turn, moving into the house where the Foundation had been located. Activities are focused on the three components of the program. The homework assistance sessions are held in the basement, while the main floor houses the reception area and the kids’ own radio station, and the second floor is used for playing music and for social pediatric guidance and assessment.

Space is tight for le Garage à musique, which has the ambition of renovating and moving into the Ovila Pelletier Building, named for a police officer who was very involved in organizing sports in the 1930s. The building has been empty since 2007 and would be suitable for the activities of le Garage à musique, which dreams of opening a 24/7 drop-in centre that would serve as a refuge for the kids and as creative springboard for their future.

This building needs to be completely renovated, at an approximate cost of $1.2 million. La Ville de Montréal has agreed to turn the building over to le Garage à musique if it can provide $450,000 guaranteed funding. Le Garage à musique can rely on the help of the social pediatrics centre’s many partners, including its numerous volunteers, elementary and high schools, la Maison de la culture, le Centre culturel et sportif, the arts community, other community resources, private and public partners and, of course, financial support from civil society.

“You have to be a little crazy to imagine such projects,” admits Hélène Sioui-Trudel but adds, with great passion, “We have to give kids the tools they need.”