Canada’s music education charity, MusiCounts, has announced that 74 schools across Canada will receive $1 million worth of musical instruments, equipment, and gear via its school funding programs—the MusiCounts Band Aid Program and the MusiCounts Slaight Family Foundation Innovation Fund. Since 1997, the MusiCounts Band Aid Program has given grants to under-resourced schools to keep school music programs alive. This is the first year of investment through the MusiCounts Slaight Family Innovation Fund stream, which supports schools with up to $20,000 for culturally relevant or technology-forward programming. While MusiCounts has been supporting these types of programs for decades, this new funding stream will empower the success of approaches to music education that exist outside of mainstream practice, including Indigenous drumming, steel pan percussion, Hip Hop, and music production. musicounts.ca