Music Programs for Kids with Special Needs

This week Grotto catches up with Mark Lucas who grew up with epilepsy and now runs The Music Room. He provides music education for kids with a variety of special needs.

“We just provide a platform for people to do what they’re already capable of,” he shares.

Video Transcript

Mark Lucas: My name’s Mark Lucas. What we do here is we work with special needs individuals teaching music education. We do a lot of specialized music programs for people with autism and any kind of physical intellectual disability and also everyone else.

The Music Room provides music lessons, music therapy, and community outreach.

Mark: Music’s one of the most powerful tools that you can possibly use in self-improvement, physically and mentally.

What really inspired me to create these music programs is because I grew up with epilepsy, and I always struggled with it, but one thing that was always constant was music. I took my love of music, and I wanted to help people, and we’ve had tremendous success so far. We like to make sure everyone can get a chance to play to their interests.

A great thing that everyone here gets to see is the daily improvement and folks are like playing on their own, they’re making songs, and they’re having fun. We just provide a platform for people to do what they’re already capable of. These things that we take for granted every day, like writing or speaking, for a lot of folks, this stuff’s tough to learn.

My name is Mark Lucas. I am the founder of The Music Room and, if you’re interested in more stories like mine or more inspiring stories, please check out the Grotto Network.