Erin Parkes's Contact Details

Erin Parkes's Company Details

Lotus Centre for Special Music Education

Ottawa, ON, CA • 20 - 49 Employees
Music

Lotus Centre for Special Music Education is dedicated to providing access to music programs for the special needs community. Music is powerful and universal—it can improve our mood, contribute to brain development, enhance learning, bring people together, and improve self-esteem through engaging in a rewarding activity. Our goal is to make sure people of all abilities are able to participate in music making in a way that is meaningful to them and will enhance their well-being. Our goal at Lotus Centre is to solve this problem through innovative and collaborative approaches that allow all learners to reach their full potential. To address this issue, we fulfill our mandate through a wide variety of activities:• Direct-service programming: we have two locations in Ottawa where we provide private and group music lessons, after-school program, camps and workshops to the special needs community. Our teachers are highly-trained and are passionate about creating the best possible learning experience for all our students. Curriculum is individually developed for each student to help them reach their goals in a fun, relaxed environment. Our approach is to meet the students where they are and build on their strengths so that they can gain confidence through music making.• Community collaborations: We work with organizations like the National Arts Centre Orchestra and local school boards to bring awareness and opportunities beyond our four walls. Through these collaborations, we reach hundreds of children and adults in the community through music making workshops and concerts in which participants can see, feel, and play musical instruments and attend concerts by world-class musicians.• Research: Through active research, we are able to contribute to knowledge on best practices in special music education and share our work with the academic community. We regularly publish our work and present our studies at conferences internationally.• Teacher training: We are proud to partner with the University of Ottawa to offer Canada's first and only certificate program in special music education. All music teachers will encounter students with special needs in their professional lives, and equipping those teachers with tools and strategies is critical in creating more opportunities for people with special needs to learn music.