Libraries: The New Champions of Music-Making

Palm Harbor (Fla.) Library’s new music garden in action.

Libraries all over America are writing a new chapter as community music-making within libraries becomes a popular trend. Libraries are the heart of communities, offering a wide variety of valuable services for their patrons to engage with. Now, many libraries are reinventing themselves, installing outdoor musical instruments to bring free music-making to the community. So, why are buildings once famous for quiet now encouraging musical tunes to be created and enjoyed? Percussion Play, the world leader in designing and manufacturing outdoor musical instruments reveals why.

Let’s firstly talk about fun! Libraries that feature outdoor musical instruments add an element of fun and are a significant asset to the community, fueling inspiration, generating energy, and engaging people in a new and exciting way.
Libraries and music are both magnets for social connections, and many libraries have outdoor spaces that aren’t used as much as their services indoors. Therefore, when looking to reinvent their outdoor spaces, libraries turn to music gardens, courtyards, or sensory areas as an obvious choice. They provide somewhere safe and appealing for staff, patrons, and visitors to foster connections and focus on wellness.
In partnership with other local institutions, health specialists, and musical organizations, libraries can offer outdoor musical instruments for music therapy, rehabilitation, and senior activities designed to manage stress, enhance memory, and alleviate pain. Libraries are an obvious choice to provide visitors with this new service for the whole community to use.
At an early age, children are learning to enjoy and appreciate music without a formal learning environment. Children often feel less inhibited outdoors, and outdoor musical instruments can help introduce basic musical concepts while ensuring the focus is on the fun. Thanks to their clever design and use of the pentatonic scale, Percussion Play’s outdoor percussion instruments are so easy to play that children can develop musical skills without having to manage any technical demands of an instrument, showing children what can be expressed and achieved through music.
Being outdoors helps children have genuine freedom of musical expression. Behind this is the notion of experimentation, flexibility, and “having a go.” Being exposed to music from a young age has been proven to encourage teamwork, self-confidence, empathy, improved communication skills, and intellectual curiosity. And, individuals who have had the opportunity to develop these skills and behaviors early in life often turn out to be happier, healthier, and higher-achieving adults than those who do not.
Outdoor musical instruments are suitable for almost all libraries regardless of scale or climate. Locations with more green space can create music gardens or musical parks and leverage their outdoor spaces to encourage fun musical activities and programs—connecting music with nature and the environment. Urban libraries can put sidewalks, patios, and even walls to use—the visibility of the musical instruments will pique the interest of passersby, increase interest in the library, and reinforce the institution as a relevant and current community asset.

One library that has recently created its own music garden is Palm Harbor (Fla.) Library(PHL). Six outdoor instruments from Percussion Play were installed along the library’s west side, adjacent to the Reading Garden.

Gene Coppola, former PHL library director who has recently retired, comments, “When COVID occurred, not surprisingly, the library’s foot traffic decreased dramatically. The usage of many hands-on services declined, and library resources as a whole were impacted. It was during this dark time that opportunity rather than despair presented itself. It got the staff thinking in new ways about how best we can still serve; how to overcome these obstacles to accessibility. One way was to create a drive-thru window, and the other was an outdoor musical garden. The thinking for the latter was that since there was still a concern about entering a building where many people may be congregating, why not offer a service where residents can still enjoy the arts? And like that, the Musical Garden was born!”

Read the full case study here.

For further information on the benefits of outdoor music-making and how libraries are championing music-making, click here.

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