Yamaha announces recipient of Great Start Grant 2023

Yamaha Music Australia is proud to announce this year’s winner of the Grant Start Grant: Northern Peninsula Area State College, QLD.

Northern Peninsula Area State College will be awarded $50,000 worth of Yamaha equipment to build a music program, as well as receiving specialised training for staff and students.

The school comprises three campuses around 40km from the Northern tip of Cape York, QLD, providing education for students from Bamaga, Injinoo, Umagico, New Mapoon and Seisia communities from K-12.

The staff at the school showed an immense amount of passion toward the prospect of building their music program, and have so far been providing their own personal instruments for the students to use.

“We will wrangle, we will find as many creative solutions as we need to, but I think our shared end goal will be for our kids up here to have just as much access to the opportunities as they would in (any other school in Australia)” said Sam Jeffery, music teacher at Northern Peninsula Area State College, when asked how they were planning to build the program prior to receiving the grant.

We look forward to working with the team at Northern Peninsula Area State College to build their program, intending to provide opportunities not only to their students, but also their extended communities from the Northern Peninsula Area. Freshwater Christian College (QLD) and Frederickton Public School (NSW) have also been awarded $2,000 to help support their music programs.

The judging panel for the 2023 Great Start Grant included; Leigh Olsson, Anna Osment and Dr. Rob McWilliams from Yamaha Music Australia, and Edward Fairley (composer, arranger and performing musician, based in Victoria).