The Global Leaders Institute is building on a partnership with Sistema New Brunswick, Canada’s flagship social music education initiative that has benefited children and families province-wide for 14 years. Throughout the coming months, a team of 2024 GLI Fellows will apply tools and frameworks from the Arts MBA classroom to gain insights from this dynamic organization in an interactive case study process.
Sistema NB: Unprecedented Impact in Maritime Canada
Sistema NB is the brainchild of New Brunswick Youth Orchestra President & CEO Ken MacLeod. In 2009, MacLeod transplanted and adapted Venezuela’s famed music education network, El Sistema, to the unique context of Maritime Canada. Following a fact-finding tour across Venezuela, NBYO adopted a one-year prototype and a 4-year plan to expand and replicate the program throughout the province.
In the years following, Sistema NB’s growth journey has created extraordinary results. What began as a single charter program for 50 children grew into a 9-charter project involving more than 1,200 children in 2023. Today, Sistema NB operates nine centers, offering tuition-free music education (three hours of lessons, five days a week) in Moncton, Saint John, Richibucto, Edmundston, Miramichi, Tracadie, the Elsipogtog First Nation, Chaleur, and Fredericton. Sistema NB offers courses in the province’s official languages (French & English) and works especially closely with First Nations communities, newcomers to Canada, and at-risk youth. With an ambitious goal to tenfold its students in the next 15 years, Sistema NB’s “10,000 Children” campaign strives to lift a generation of New Brunswick children from poverty. The Azrieli Foundation, McCain Foundation, and others lead the way among many private sector sponsors supporting Sistema NB’s mission to “End Intergenerational Poverty” in New Brunswick over the next 15 years. The New Brunswick government further supports this new impact goal, which has offered a CAD $8.2 million grant for the program’s expansion.
Sistema NB – Impact Video – Version #2 – FR Subs – from BrainWorks Marketing on Vimeo.
Through its evolution, Sistema NB has become a flagship project for others across Canada and in similar regions of the Northern Hemisphere, from Sweden to Alaska. The unique feature of Sistema NB working to address poverty in a highly developed nation through music education makes the initiative a pioneer in an often overlooked yet critical socio-economic and geographic context.
Addressing Poverty in Developed Nations: Making the Invisible Visible
How do you make the case to support under-resourced communities in so-called “developed nations” where poverty is often less visible on the surface? The economic gap between developing and developed nations has been widening since the 1980s, but the gap between rich and poor within developed countries has also been growing. This divide is most evident in countries that have yet to be able to transition from an industrial economy to participate in the Information Age.
In places like Canada, under-resourced communities do not tend to experience the same levels of visible suffering — famine, starvation, homelessness, etc — all visible reflections of poverty. But what happens in the developed world when the cost of living and the gap between high-income and lower-income families increases? What happens when more than working full-time is needed to get by?
Poverty in developed nations has harsh, often private, consequences on families and communities. Isolation is often the first symptom of under-resourced communities in the developed world, particularly in rural areas seemingly left out of the economic growth that has defined more densely populated areas. Daniel J. Dutton’s “Deep Poverty in New Brunswick” study shows this is true for the Canadian province, if also difficult to measure quantitatively:
“We use Census data to map out ten-year trends in poverty (2006-2016) with limited success, as consistent deep poverty measures are not available—the choice of poverty line matters in this comparison. Trends based on the LIM (a relative measure of poverty, which grows with increases in median incomes) imply that poverty in New Brunswick increased over the study period in question. However, trends based on the MBM (an absolute measure of poverty, which grows with inflation) imply that poverty has decreased. This outcome difference is particularly evident for seniors, whose poverty levels have been increasing according to the LIM and decreasing according to the MBM.”
Measuring poverty in places like New Brunswick is a challenge social sciences can best support. Without adequate policy commitment and public interest, measuring poverty gets stuck between a rock and a hard place. It is like deciding between measuring one’s height compared to relatives or people worldwide, two very different projections with equally incomplete information. The result for policymakers can be a lack of focus and a clear understanding of underlying social challenges and their causes. The neglect worsens when considering how these complicated measurements further obscure the experience of exclusion that particular minority community groups suffer in this setting.
David Miles, a New Brunswicker and JUNO Award-winning artist, expresses the social problem thus: “One in every five children lives in poverty that destroys their potential and possibilities. We say they are at risk, but the damage [occurs] today and every day. The impact shows in missed days at school, low literacy rates, and behavioral problems. They don’t believe in themselves, perhaps the biggest tragedy.”
Considering the prevalence of social isolation and exclusion in many parts of New Brunswick, it comes as no surprise that a significant feature of Sistema NB’s work is to help children discover their potential and learn to believe in themselves despite often bleak surroundings that may not support this innate sense of optimism and possibility. Sistema NB’s innovative and adaptive model has pioneered a powerful pathway for under-resourced children to engage in meaningful, community-building activities such as music-making and experience achievement to believe that the fruits of excellence are not out of their reach.
The Opportunity Ahead: A New Leadership Chapter
NBYO/Sistema NB is searching for its next President & CEO to become part of this unique and transformative organization’s legacy. MacLeod’s eventual successor faces the challenge of filling in for the former founder of the organization, who started Sistema NB in a single location in Moncton with one teacher and 50 kids learning violin, viola, and cello. Having come to NBYO as a veteran entrepreneur and consultant specializing in fundraising and communications for non-profit organizations serving charitable organizations throughout Canada, MacLeod previously served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. Through his work with NBYO/Sistema NB, MacLeod has been recognized with the Governor General’s “Meritorious Service Medal,” the Queen Elizabeth II “Silver Jubilee Medal”, Order of Moncton, and is a Salzburg Global Seminar and Paul Harris fellow. He has served on numerous local, regional, and national Boards, including a longstanding board member of the The Global Leaders Institute and The Orchestra of the Americas Group Canada.
As NBYO dreams of scaling its impact throughout Canada and internationally, a unique brand of leadership is required to fill MacLeod’s shoes, ensuring the organization continues to receive the necessary resources to continue democratizing access to music education in the territory without sacrificing the immense progress its focused work on New Brunswick has yielded in the past 14 years.
Case Study Group
Alexandra Cruz (Colombia | 2024 GLI)
Anna Carolina Pelaes-Shapiro (USA | 2024 GLI)
Elizabeth Kilpatrick (USA | 2024 GLI)
Elizabeth Snow (USA | 2024 GLI)
Sources:
Dutton, D.J., & Emery, J. C. H. (2019). Deep poverty in New Brunswick: A description and national comparisons. Fredericton, NB: New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training.
https://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/esic/pdf/DeepPoverty.pdf
Dutton, D.J., & Emery, J. C. H. (2020)
Sistema New Brunswick – Introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xIORkZP8rA
10,000 children initiative website
https://10000children.ca/
Sistema NB – Impact Video – Version #2 – FR Subs –https://vimeo.com/699186202
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/sistema-nb-government-funding-1.6668620
