We’ve had a very busy summer around Dub Academy, with over 160 students coming through the Dub Academy doors to learn about music, science, and technology, and another 125 students at off-site camps and programs where we brought the fun to them.

We kicked off the summer of 2015 at the X Games, as we DJed and had fun with festival-goers as they entered COTA for a weekend of extreme sports. We turned a few classic Tech Decks into MIDI controllers and let the budding musicians have some fun, and we DJed for our friends at Breakdance Austin as they entertained the crowds.

Our summer programs started with a great week of summer camp fun with the girls at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders. These young ladies learned about DJing, music production, and got into some of the science of music, including coding using music thanks to the Sonic Pi software and Dub Academy’s fantastic intern, Mitch. They wrapped up their camp week with a final performance at a public graduation at Juiceland, as some of our DJ 102 students from the school year graduated alongside them.

Job shadowing was certainly popular this summer; once students’ days weren’t filled with school, they had the opportunity to do some career exploration. We resumed our annual summer partnership with Communities in Schools and had approximately 20 teens come in to learn what a day in the life of a music non-profit looked like. E4 Youth also sent some students over for job shadowing through their Shadow the Pros program, which wrapped up with a special presentation at McGarrah Jesse on July 29.

Our wonderful friends at The Thinkery got us outside of our comfort zones this summer as they brought busloads of 1st through 5th graders to the school to learn about MIDI and music tinkering for a few field trips. We typically serve students in middle and high school, so hosting these little ones made for a pretty fun and interesting afternoon. Our instructors were called magicians by the kiddos, and many of them begged for the MIDI controller to make a fart noise instead of the standard airhorn. Those will certainly be field trips that we won’t soon forget!

Off-site we spent time with the Side by Side Kids Camp, teaching mini-DJ lessons to their excited students. We also had the awesome opportunity to present our MIDI science lessons to the students of the Mother Falcon Music Camp, where students learning classic and rock instruments learned how technology could open up a whole other world of music for them.

We’ve also had our best summer yet for the summer camps that we host at the school; we had a diverse array of students come to camps to learn DJ 101, DJ 102, Ableton, and Maschine. One of our students even came all the way from Quebec! We still have a few summer camps finishing up in August, so if you’ve been waiting until the last minute, we still have some space. Give us a call at 512.600.2144 or email info@dubacademy.org to enroll.

Finally, in addition to all of the teaching elements, we got to have a little fun with some of our friends and community partners. We DJed at July’s Thinkery 21 event (and we’ll be there again for their August event), had some of our students and instructors perform at the Mischief Magazine Ice Cream Sundays event, and made some new friends at the Austin Chronicle cookout.

Summer 2015 was by far our best summer to date, and we are so excited to do even more this fall! Be sure to keep up to date with what we’re doing by following us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And if you’d like to help support our programs, please feel free to make a donation.

Thank you for your support of Dub Academy’s mission to empower young minds through innovative electronic music education.