Meet Bec Taylor, the young music teacher and entrepreneur schooling Canberra’s modern musicians
By Claire Harris
Bec Taylor is the founder of the Bec Taylor School of Music. The young entrepreneur, professional musician, songwriter, performer and teacher set out four years ago to offer a fun alternative to traditional music education. If the growth of the school over that time is anything to go by, she’s clearly struck a chord with Canberra kids and adults!
Established in the Dickson Chambers building, with a lovely leafy view out of many of the teaching rooms, Bec said she knew pretty early on that she wanted Dickson as her future ‘hometown’.
“When I was shopping around for a place to sign a lease and establish the business, I was looking at Mitchell and the city and different shops around Canberra in the Inner North. But Dickson just stuck out to me as this small business haven,” says Bec.
“Canberra isn’t necessarily known for its small business culture, which can be hard sometimes as an entrepreneur. But Dickson has a real small business entrepreneur culture, with lots of diversity,” she says.
What inspired Bec to start the school and become a business owner?
Bec originally trained with a degree in teaching hoping to inspire kids but she realised it wasn’t going the way it should have.
“I quickly became disillusioned with the education system, because I’d had my contemporary music background. I thought I was going into a modern, inspiring music education system. And it wasn’t, it was, literally stuck in the 1980s.”
“We’ve had a huge revolution in the music industry but the education industry hasn’t kept up. And it just made me think, ‘Wow, okay, What what can I do?’. And I said to myself, ‘I’m going to start my own school and bridge the gap between traditional music education and the modern music industry,” she says.
The school started in 2017, in Bec’s living room, and quickly grew. The school now has 300 current students! Some have already launched into performing around Canberra. And here’s a surprise: What’s the fastest growing class? The adult program!
As well as passionate students, Bec attracted a small army of other music teachers who wanted to be part of a modern school.
Luckily having to stop face-to-face classes with Covid didn’t change the School’s operations at all; they moved to Zoom lessons.
“We innovated like we’ve never innovated before,” Bec laughs. She admits it was a little stressful, having to learn how to teach online, but the team just got into it and did their best to keep the kids engaged.
I asked her how Dickson has changed over the last few years and she tells me that Dickson has changed for the better and also has a lot of potential.
“I’ve seen a really great investment in the future of Dickson by the government. That’s been really exciting,” she says.
“Some parts are better than others and some could do with a cleanup but it feels like people love Dickson. There’s been the Floriade setup and the grass patches, planter boxes*, new murals going up on the wall. And I feel like those little things go a long way to help the community really appreciate this suburb.
“All my teachers hang out here, for example at My Rainbow Dreams cafe. Dickson is like our hometown. Yeah, I would never want to leave Dickson,” says Bec.
Bec Taylor will be speaking at the fourth Changemaker Hub event on Friday 4 December in Dickson village, Canberra. The Changemaker Career and Craft Hub provides an opportunity to be part of local community gatherings, including workshops and a Craft and Catch-up zone. These events are run by Claire Harris from Innovate Communicate and supported by the City Renewal Authority.
You can read all about the changemakers involved in the event at: the Our Changemakers: Full Biographies page.
*See a Brave Bot in one of the planter boxes below.
Images by Claire Harris.
