We want to put the spotlight on a new opportunity for students in North Minneapolis and the surrounding areas for access to music education. I got local DJ and MC Sophia Eris on the line to tell me all about it.

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Every Wednesday morning at 8:30 CST, Jill Riley connects with experts and local personalities for some real talk about keeping our minds and bodies healthy — from staying safe in the music scene, to exercising during a pandemic, to voting and civic engagement. Looking for more resources and support? Visit our friends at Call to Mind, MPR's initiative to foster new conversations about mental health. Subscribe to Wellness Wednesday as a podcast on Spotify, Apple, RSS, Radio Public, Stitcher, or Amazon Music.

Jill Riley: Let's just jump in. What is the Minneapolis School of New Music?

Sophia Eris: The Minneapolis School of New Music is a tuition-free charter school located in North Minneapolis. It's a music immersion school that focuses at the moment on sixth to eighth graders, and eventually will expand to sixth to 12th grade. But for now, sixth to eighth grade. It's a school that immerses music within its curriculum.

Access to music and music education: I think that's such a big part of any sort of wellness journey anybody might be on, whether or not they know they're on a wellness journey. Music is such a big part of it. Sophia, how are you involved?

I was asked to join the school board, and I'm honestly honored to be a part of it. It is something that I've always kind of had on a bucket list of sorts: just wanting to help the youth in any way, shape, or form because they are the future. It's been a really amazing experience being a part of this, and I've learned so much. I just want to be successful, and I just want the kids to grow and just kill it and become amazing.

As far as enrollment information goes: I know you're not just sending people over to a website, but you've got an event coming up.

Yes. Obviously we've had a crazy year, and this thought of parents switching their kids to another school was obviously difficult because they didn't know what's going on with their own school. So now is the time to truly have a moment to think about enrolling and be open-minded to sending your kids to another school because it's finally summertime. And so I wanted to plan some type of event to introduce the school and get people pulled in. We started this event called RockEnRollment, which will happen on June 26. It's Saturday from 12:00-4:00; it's going to be outside in the back parking lot, and it's completely free for children. It's just a just a $10 donation. The acts are going to be Maria Isa, Nur-D, Gully Boys, myself, DJ Keezy, and Tone LaDon from the Northside. It's going to be a big fun party to get people to know what the school is about; get the kids excited. It'll be combined with an open house, so you can sign up for tours, you can walk through the school, and enrollment will be available right there, along with some face painting and some food. It's going to be a great event; I can't wait.

Yeah, it sounds like just a really great asset to the community. How can community members get involved with this?

I would first start off with visiting their website or following them on all socials: Minneapolis School of Music. What is truly needed right now is is spreading the word, getting people to know that this school even exists. Parents, if you have friends that have kids in the age of 6/8 grade, spread the word. It's an amazing program. For me personally, becoming an artist in my field has made me grow immensely as a human being. I feel like music, combining methods with science [and] math, it just makes your brain expand. And that kind of makes you smarter. It makes you hear information quicker.

At this point because it's so new, I think the best way that community can help is just spreading the word and coming to the events. You'll get to know more on June 26!

There are a lot of public charter schools out there; there are schools with great music programs and arts programs. When it comes to this one, the Minneapolis School of New Music, like what would you say is really unique about it?

There's a couple parts that are unique. Number one, it's located in Northside. I personally lived there for six years. And it's such a special place but just expanding and it's growing. That side of the city has gone through so much, and building a school like this in Northside is just gonna bring so much beauty to that community.

The other amazing part about the school is that it's starting from sixth to eighth grade and a lot of music schools don't start 'til really high school. So this is getting kids started early, getting them excited early, and then opening their brains to what could be possible moving forward at that age is really beautiful.

One thing about the Northside that I think about when I think about kids is: remember the "Hot Cheetos and Takis" kids? That was an afterschool program at the Y, and they were kind of in that age range of this school. So imagine, now it's a whole entire school that you could be immersed in — not just an afterschool program. And it's a beautiful school, by the way, it's huge. It has a full gym and an amazing, like, park that will be turned into a stage, like a courtyard. The classrooms are beautiful and it's just a brand new thing in Minneapolis.

It's just been very hard! It's so hard. We've just been kind of dealing with so many horrible things. But this is actually something that's good. It could be such a bright light for our future.

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Before I let you go, how are things going with Auntie's?

At this moment, we are looking at different properties, and we're just waiting for the perfect one, honestly. We've spent five months building a virtual reality venue, honestly. Because before now, now that things are opening back up, we didn't know when things would actually be open. And so in the meantime, we built this amazing virtual reality venue at auntiesvenue.com, and we're just doing live shows in that aspect. You can walk around as your own avatar, you can kind of see our vision. You can experience shows in there and mingle with people within this venue. So all summer, we're just gonna keep coming and throwing pop-up events that will support the community because they supported us so much. This is kind of the first step of wanting to give back to a beautiful cause, which is building a school in North Minneapolis. There's going to be more shows we're throwing all summer, and it's going to lead up to eventually our physical space.

Wellness Wednesday is hosted by Jill Riley, and produced by Anna Weggel and Jay Gabler. Our theme music is a portion of the song "F.B. One Number 2" by Christian Bjoerklund under the Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 International License.