A group of young entrepreneurs at AMIT Bet Ashkelon Junior and Senior High School has been working over the past year to bring music to the masses, especially those from weaker socioeconomic backgrounds.
The students opened a recording studio in Ashkelon with the hopes of making music and sound production more accessible to different populations in their city. Existing studios are expensive to use, according to the students, and they wanted to enable underserved populations to enjoy such a space as well.
The students undertook the project as part of their work with Unistream, an organization whose mission is to “improve Israeli society by training underprivileged Israeli teens and young adults in entrepreneurship and leadership, in both the business and social arenas.”
The AMIT Bet Ashkelon students worked with a mentor from Unistream who taught them about the entrepreneurial process throughout the year. They gained real-world knowhow, skills, and expertise by founding a startup and going through every step: opening the company, appointing leadership, and developing a product or service from the earliest stages of brainstorming, through feasibility assessment, market research, prototyping, patent registration, raising capital, and manufacture and marketing.
The students’ music studio will also serve as a rehearsal space, a place for music enrichment classes, and the base for the school’s radio station.
They decided to use a special business model in which payment can be made in the traditional way or through community service or volunteering. For example, a musician who uses the studio to record or produce music can pay for that time by teaching music production to members of the community.
Additionally, fees for using the space will be lower than those of other commercial studios as it will be run and maintained by AMIT Bet students. Their work at the studio not only enables them to learn about music and sound production, it will also give them professional experience and skills they can use to find employment in the future.
