Trunk Or Treat! Join Us At the Irmo Music Academy!

Academy Admin team talk about our upcoming Trunk or Treat!

Join us for an afternoon of spooky music fun! In conjunction with Columbia Arts Academy and Lexington School of Music, Irmo Music Academy will be hosting our very first trunk or treat event - free of charge!

Trunk or treat while you:
Win prizes
Learn about the instruments we offer
Support and meet local businesses (like our friends at Irmo Fire District, Irmo Branch Library, Snug Harbor Animal Rescue, and more!)
Vote for best decorated trunk
 meet our furry friends from Final Victory Animal Rescue and support them with a supply drive
and more!

Follow us to keep up to date on more announcements and learn more about the wonderful businesses we are lucky to have joining us!

Transcript

Marissa:

Hey everyone, it's Marissa, the Columbia Arts Academy, Lexington School of Music, and Irmo Music Academy. We are here today with two of our assistant directors, Finn and Robyn, and we're going to be talking about one of our really cool brand new upcoming events.

For those of you that are new with us, the Columbia Arts Academy has been in business for over 20 years. We also have the Lexington School of Music, which is going on its 13th year, and the Irmo Music Academy, which is going on its eighth year. We provide music lessons for students as young as four. We offer private instruction in guitar, bass guitar, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, drums, piano, voice, and violin. We host recitals twice a year at the Koger Center at the Darla Moore School of Business Johnson Performance Hall. We have had students perform in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Guest House at Graceland at the Elvis Presley Estate, as well as Carnegie Hall, local events such as the Rosewood Crawfish Festival, St. Pat's, and Five Points. We also do caroling at local senior citizen communities.

As part of our community events, we are starting something new. We are doing a trunk or treat at the Irmo Music Academy. We are all about the community events. We want to make sure that we are inviting this to our music community, and local businesses will be on hand as well. Finn, since I know this was really a lot of your brainchild, can you talk about the vision you have for the trunk or treat?

Finn:

Yeah, absolutely. We are so, so excited for this. We've talked a long time about how to really bring our community together. We have a ton of amazing families that have a lot of different things going on personally. I know quite a few off the top of my head that have personal businesses and really cool things they do on the side, so we were hoping with this trunk or treat event that we would be able to both celebrate what our students do and also really help show the community what they can offer as well. So we're really hoping that we can help lift everyone up in the community with this.

Marissa:

Awesome. Would you say that our event is geared more towards current or prospective? Who is this event really for?

Finn:

Yeah, that's a great question. It really is for everyone. When we mean community, we truly mean the community at large. With all three of our locations, we have a wide range of people that we're hoping that this will get out to because we want to really celebrate everyone in our community. So anyone is available to come in, it's a completely free event. We would love for them to stop by, even if it's just someone who is looking for a safe place to trick or treat this year.

Marissa:

Okay. I know we were talking about it being for the community and we're going to have a lot of different community groups coming. Can you talk about who is going to be at the trunk or treat?

Finn:

Yes, absolutely. Okay, so I am super excited about this. First, we have Final Victory Animal Rescue. These are long-term friends of ours. We have worked with them already for a few different events. They are a local animal rescue here in the Columbia area. They really focus on trying to make a safe and positive experience for animals while they wait for their forever home. Basically, what we're doing with them is we are accepting a supply drive for them. So basically any kind of monetary or supply donations that anyone can bring, we are accepting that as our way of helping give back to them as well. So we're super excited about them.

Next up, in that same category, we have Snug Harbor Animal Rescue. Those are also some friends of ours. I've actually personally had an animal be rescued by them before, a little possum that we found, and she was phenomenal. I felt very safe working with her with that, so we're very excited to have her join us as well.

Then following up with that, a more recognizable name, we have the Irmo Fire District. They will be bringing their fire truck, very excited about that. I think that's going to be a lot of fun, especially for the kids and also for me. After that, we've got the Lexington County Library, the Irmo branch specifically, they're going to be bringing some things there to help tell the community more about the programs that they offer. After that, we have our neighbors, Midlands Orthopaedics, which are right beside us at the Irmo location. They are very, very excited about that. They are going to be telling more people about what they do and kind of getting the word out of the important work that they do over there as well.

Then finally, what I'm really excited about is we have some student family companies that will be there. There are personal students of ours at some locations, and they are bringing their business to be able to show them. We're actually extremely excited. This was one of the main things that we wanted to do with this, is to show a larger community the small businesses in the area. We really want to try and help promote them.

So first with that, we have ProLift Garage Doors of Lake Murray. This is from our students at our Irmo location, the Crisci family, and they're going to be bringing a really cool booth and they're going to be showing people more about what they do. They do garage door sales, repair, and installations. Next up, we have Elevare Counseling. That is a small business with the family, the Neusch family, over here at the Lexington location. Basically, what they do there is manage counseling for businesses and people. It's consulting; she actually has a degree in human behavior, so that is something that she's focusing on, so I'm very excited for that for her. We also have the Boy Scout Troop 139 that are coming out. I know, Marissa, you're part of the Scouts as a whole, so we were very excited to get them on as well.

Marissa:

Yeah, I am really glad that we're going to have a Scout presence. So we will have the Scouting America Unit 139 to talk about all things Scouting there as well for the event. I do know, I think we're still waiting to see, I believe Doctors Eye Care in Irmo is also thinking about setting up a table, so we're waiting to get that confirmed. But really, I love that we're getting such a community event from not just our students in their small businesses, but some of the larger community entities like the Scouts, the library, the fire district. That's really, really awesome.

I know we've been talking about things that we're bringing for the animal rescues, and please know that that is not obligatory. It's just since we're going to be there, we want to make sure we are able to contribute to them if we can. But again, remember, this is a free event. So we're not charging anything for the trunk or treat. Finn, I feel like we really need to go into when is this happening, where is this happening?

Finn:

Yeah, that's a great question. This event is going to happen on Sunday, October 26th from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM. That will be in our lower parking lot. We will have signs there for everyone as well. We're really, really excited. We've got a few weeks until then.

Marissa:

Now, keep in mind guys, this is going to be at the Irmo Music Academy. The Irmo Music Academy is located at 1061 Lake Murray Boulevard, Irmo 29063. It is a free event. We do have a Facebook event for this. So if you go to our Facebook page, Irmo Music Academy, you should be able to see our events as well. What I'm going to do too is I will have a link put up on our website for IrmoMusicAcademy.com, so this way if you go there, it'll have our event information as well. Is there any other cool things we should expect at the event? What are we going to be doing there?

Finn:

Yeah, absolutely. So we have quite the list of things going on. It's going to be a very busy day, which means it's going to be a lot of fun for us. So basically, aside from the businesses that will be joining us, we also have two of our student families will be in there as well. So we'll be able to mingle and talk more with them and their experiences with music lessons. We also will have trunks set up to detail more about our instruments that we offer as well. So this way, if you're considering possibly starting lessons, this is a good way to get your student or yourself out and play around with the instrument and ask any questions you may have with some of our instructors as well who'll be there. Then of course we will have prizes, we're very excited about that. We're going to be doing a contest of the best decorated trunk, as well as just more free goodies for everyone involved.

Marissa:

Finn, I know you mentioned the contest. Who's going to be voting on the best decorated trunks?

Finn:

So that would actually be the attendees will be deciding that. So basically they'll come in and we'll give them something to vote with, and then they will decide who is the best decorated trunk. Then we have a gift set aside for the best trunk decorated.

Marissa:

Awesome. I'm really looking forward to this event. I know it's the first time we've done a trunk or treat, but I love when we add on new events and we learn new things for all of our students to participate in.

Finn:

Yeah, absolutely. I'm super excited.

Marissa:

All right, Finn, any other information?

Finn:

I think that really is everything that I wanted to go over. If you have any questions or concerns about what we're doing here, they can always reach out to our locations here, or they can message the Facebook event page. I'll be handling all of that. Yeah, otherwise, I'm super excited and I think this is going to be a fantastic time.

Marissa:

I agree. All right guys, we look forward to seeing you. Again, it is Sunday the 26th from 4:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon. Our address, 1061 Lake Murray Boulevard, Irmo 29063. Check us out on our Facebook page and our website, Irmo Music Academy, Columbia Arts Academy, and Lexington School of Music. All right everyone, stay spooky.

Finn:

Bye.