Library in Norman Wells, N.W.T., adds jam space with $14K grant for musical instruments

You might think of a library as a quiet place. But in Norman Wells, that's about to change. 

The town's community library received a shipment of $14,000 worth of musical instruments and equipment on a barge at the start of the September, and the gear is being used to turn a corner of the library into a jam space. 

Sam Wright-Smith, the chair of the library's board of directors, wrote an application that landed Norman Wells with a grant from the MusiCounts TD Community Music Program in the fall of 2021. 

Nearly a year later, the gear finally arrived. 

Wright-Smith then had to figure out how, exactly, to put guitars, ukuleles, keyboards, hand drums, fiddles, a drum set, recording equipment and sensory instruments into the hands of students at the adjoining Mackenzie Mountain School. 

Kids will be able to access the instruments and equipment during school time, and during the library's hours, said Wright-Smith. One teacher has come forward asking to organize a guitar group, she said, and the library plans to hold workshops every other week where people with experience will lead participants through the basics of a given instrument. 

"The hope is that it's really just going to give the young people in the community an opportunity to find a new hobby or find a new passion or, you know, cope with whatever they're going through in a different way, like so many of us do with music," she said. 

The library also received raw materials and funding to organize a hand drum-making workshop. 

The MusiCounts TD Community Music Program doled out $500,000 worth of musical instruments, equipment and music resources to community organizations in Canada in 2021. Of the 33 organizations named, three others were in the North: the Ingamo Hall Friendship Centre in Inuvik, N.W.T., the Boys and Girls Club of Yukon in Whitehorse and the Iqaluit Music Society. 

Instruments bring possibility of music class

Mackenzie Mountain School hasn't had a music program in several years according to its principal, Matthew Zink. He said that's partly because the pandemic led to a ban on singing and using wind instruments, but also because it's been hard to get instruments as an isolated, northern community. 

"The school had some instruments, but it was more-so like a teacher would have an extra guitar that they would donate to the school or an extra drum or something like that, but we never had a huge set of nice musical instruments like the library has now," he said. 

Zink said the school is working with the library to offer music classes to students, and also wants to set up an extra-curricular music club during lunch hours. He said they want to make instruments available for students to use as a "calming device" if they're feeling intense emotions at school. 

"A lot of these students come from homes that can't afford or don't have easy access to things like guitars, which are super expensive to buy and super expensive to ship up to an isolated community," said Zink. "Having that basic level of exposure to instruments, getting a feel for them, how they sound in person, I think would be an eye-opening experience for a lot of them." 

Growing up in Nova Scotia, Wright-Smith said she had music class regularly during elementary school, and was surprised to find out that students in Norman Wells didn't. What drove her to apply for the grant, she said, was a desire to bring something to the community that it would continue to benefit from, even if she moved away. 

Wright-Smith expected to hold a soft launch of what she's called the library's "jam spot" at the end of September. She also hopes to give the space a better name — but that's something the library's board of directors will have to vote on, together, later down the road.