BROOKLYN, N.Y. (PIX11) -- The Brooklyn Music School, a 115-year-old institution in Fort Greene, is racing against time to raise $100,000 by Friday to ensure its summer programs can continue.
The school is known for providing affordable arts education to thousands of students across Brooklyn.
Brian Adamczyk, the Executive Director of the school, explained the urgency of the situation: "We are hoping to raise a hundred thousand dollars by Friday of this week to protect and ensure our ability to move forward with our summer programming for all our students."
To meet this goal, the school is hosting a benefit concert Wednesday night at 8 p.m. in its Playhouse Theater at 126 St. Felix Street. The event is organized in partnership with Mark Kelly of The Roots and will feature over a dozen professional musicians, including members from The Roots, Living Color, and DJ Logic.
Adamczyk outlined the factors that led to the current financial predicament: "We've had delays with important city funding that reimburses our operations. Throughout the year, we've had very, very severe building issues and we've had to bring things up to code to make sure that we're safe and looking at our liability carefully."
The school's mission to provide low-cost programming to the community has also contributed to its financial challenges.
Adamczyk says the potential impact of not meeting the fundraising goal is significant: "There's roughly 200 students that would be impacted if we didn't raise the funds and couldn't run those programs. Not to mention all the really important childcare that those camps provide all summer for the families."
While the immediate goal is to secure the summer programs, Adamczyk emphasized that the fundraising efforts will need to continue: "If and when we hit this goal, which we're feeling confident about, but we need more support to get to a hundred thousand dollars by Friday, we will then need to continue raising money throughout the summer to really stabilize the organization once and for all."
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