Measuring our impact

Our A violin can change the world program is built on a scientific foundation that continues to be strengthened by experimentation and advances in neuroscience. Because of its many benefits for the brain, playing music acts as a catalyst in children’s cognitive development.

For many years, neuroimaging has shown that the brain is highly responsive to musical stimuli. Playing a musical instrument has a unique, fundamental property: it activates every area of the brain simultaneously and creates multiple interconnections. This is especially true for young children because of their remarkable level of neural plasticity. Multiple international studies have shown the benefits of playing music for children’s cognition and motor skills. Findings suggest that music improves verbal capabilities (J. Bolduc, 2006), acquisition of mathematical concepts (Bamberger, 2000), IQ test scores (Schellenberg, 2004) and memory performance (Lee and al., 2007), among other skills.

More recently, a study of 147 primary students in pilot schools in Amsterdam showed that when children took music lessons, they performed better in school and had significant improvement in memorization, concentration and verbal intelligence.

These studies underscore the value of our A violin can change the world program and are consistent with the results of a Swissocial study conducted for the Foundation in Switzerland. All of these findings have deepened our conviction that learning to play a challenging instrument like the violin benefits disadvantaged children, helping them close a development gap that holds them back before they ever walk into a classroom.