Hope parents seeking fun ways to bring music to their kids are finally getting the chance to do so thanks to one Hope local and her ensemble of music expertise.
For the past couple of months, Naomi Barrettara, the owner of Hope Mountain Melodies, has been bringing two musical programs to Hope: Sunday Morning Melodies and Rhythm and Movement. Starting last summer, with Sunday Morning Melodies, the two programs can now be found at the Hope Recreation Centre (Rec Centre) — garnering strong, positive, community response and even a $1000 donation plus endorsement from the Hope Rotary Club.
“That was just so incredible to me, that I didn’t approach them. They just came to me,” Barrettara said. “The Rotary Club has been so wonderful. I met with them. Late in the fall, I went to their meetings, and I did a short presentation about what I was trying to do. And what funding would allow me to do in the future. As soon as we kind of got all of our ducks in a row with me meeting with them, they were very fast to present that funding to me.
“So now that I have that, and now that I see there’s this strong community support, I’m looking for the best way for the program to grow.”
According to Barrettara, she was first approached by Rotary Club’s newest member Daniel Dowzenkowski about helping fund her idea of organizing a musical group or program — that is completely accessible to families of all backgrounds — in Hope.
“As a parent to a young daughter who adores music and children, I saw tremendous potential in Naomi’s idea,” Dowżenkowski said via Facebook. “Investing in our children today ensures a brighter future tomorrow. It is through initiatives like Naomi’s musical group that we cultivate creativity, foster community engagement, and instill a love for the arts in the hearts of our youth.”
Barrettara, who lives in Hope with her husband and daughter, said she first got the idea to “bring” music to Hope after enrolling her daughter in one of Music Together’s 10-week programs that came to Hope. While she and her daughter enjoyed the program, Music Together never came back to the Rec Centre and the pair were forced to seek out classes in Agassiz and Chilliwack. For a year and a half, Barrettara took her daughter to these classes while thinking that this type of music initiative and project was needed in Hope. She also realized that an accessible music program — one that wasn’t expensive and where attendance wasn’t mandatory — was also needed.
“I kept thinking to myself, ‘maybe this is something I can do’?” she said. “And it could be something that I could do even as a full time mom but include my daughter as part of it because I want these opportunities for her. But I was a little uncertain because so much of my experience was in teaching adults and in teaching at the college level.”
Originally from Ontario, Barrettara grew up constantly being surrounded by music and had a deep passion for it from a young age. This included playing any instrument she could get her hands on, being part of music ensembles in all of her schools, and continously studying how to introduce new sounds in her life. She went to Wilfrid Laurier University and got a BA with a double major in Music History and Music Education. After completing her bachelors degree, Barrettara travelled to New York City in order to attend the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. There she did a joint Masters and PhD music program and now has a doctorate in music.
During this time, Barrettara met her husband who grew up in Agassiz. The couple bought a property in Hope and divided their time between B.C. and New York, with Barrettara spending more time in New York due to the work she was doing with the Metropolitan Opera guild. This included running community programs, children programs, teaching music courses, being a producer for their podcast, and building several online learning courses.
Eventually, Barrettara’s husband convinced her to leave New York and live in Hope during the pandemic lockdown. The decision worked in Barrettara’s favour as she fell in love with Hope and now can’t see herself leaving. After a few years in Hope, Barrettara and her husband welcomed their daughter. Though Barrettara continued to do her work remotely, and had even taken a position at Douglas college, she decided to be a stay-at-home-mom. In doing so, she began to realize that there was a need for children’s music programing in Hope.
Encouraged by her friends and fellow moms, Barrettara decided to try and run a music program herself. For 10 weeks last summer, she did Sunday Morning Melodies in Memorial Park. The event was free and she welcomed parents and their children between the ages of newborn to 10-years-old (though she was also flexible about allowing children a little older to join). The event was a hit and it prompted Barrettara to seek a way to bring it more permanently to Hope.
After looking around, Barrettara joined the Rec Centre as an independent contractor, she began running classes for her two programs — Rhythm and Movement on Thursdays (for toddlers or steady walkers to 6-year-olds) and Sunday Morning Melodies on Sundays (for newborns to 10-year-olds), which run for 9 to 10 weeks each “semester.”
Rhythm and Movement is described by Barrettara as a “toddler dance class” where children get to dance to music, and learn movement in conjucture with music. Meanwhile, Sunday Morning Melodies is described as a class where children participate in singing rhythm activities while also getting to try out different instruments. In both classes, parents are encouraged to join in the singing and dancing.
According to Barrettara, the response from the community has been incredible, especially with the Rotary Club’s support. Originally starting with an average of 15 children (along with their parents, as the classes require parents to attend) that number has only grown over the months with 21, sometimes 26, children trying to join classes. The growing interest is exciting and incredibly humbling, Barrettara said, and she is incredibly grateful for the community’s support.
However, while this growth is welcomed, Barrettara said she has been encountering a new challenge because of it; due to the success and popularity of the classes, Barrettara — due to the limitations and liability restrictions that the Rec Centre has in place for their children programming — said the centre wants her to cap her classes at 15 children.
“I know that there’s other venues in town that this could happen, especially now that there is this strong community support,” Barrettara said. “Lots of people have suggested, ‘I have a contact here I have a contact there if you want me to get in touch with them and ask them.’ So, I feel that the community has this strong desire to figure out a way to make the program as accessible as possible, to as many people as possible.”
Currently, Barrettara is working with the Rec Centre — who also don’t want to see her programs leave — to try and keep the programs in their space. Thanks to the Rotary Club’s support, she said she is looking to pursue renting a space with the Rec Centre.
According to the Rec Centre, because the program involves children and is currently being run as an official offering of the centre, they must follow certain class capacity limits that are set by guidelines for all of their programming. As such, it means the options for raising the limit requires: either officially hiring an assistant so that the instructor to child ratio is higher, or renting the space and having the program run as not being affiliated with the rec centre programming offering. That is, Barrettara rents the space from them.
Despite this setback, Barrettara said she is determined to work with the Rec Centre, who also don’t want to see her programs move to a different venue. Thanks to the Rotary Club’s support, she said she is looking to pursue renting a space with the Rec Centre. Right now she is just waiting to see when she can do that and how she can do that.
“I’m very excited. I’m inspired and I’m very motivated to find ways for it to grow,” Barrettara said. “I started it very much as a passion project without any starter money. I basically committed to going into the hole to make it happen. And so because of that, I’m in a very privileged position, in that I did not have to turn profit from it.
For more information about the programs, its classes, and Barrettara, people can visit the Hope Mountain Melodies new website at www.mountainmelodies.org. The community is also welcome to check out and join the Hope Mountain Melodies Facebook page, the Rhythm and Movement Facebook page, and the Sunday Morning Music Facebook page.
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@KemoneMoodley
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