In 2016, a small group of Sunshine Coast musicians spearheaded by Eumundi's own five-time ARIA award-winning singer/songwriter Katie Noonan, her husband, jazz saxophonist, Zac Hurren, and members of Sunshine Coast surf/rock band Band of Frequencies came up with the plan to create a free music school in Eumundi. Eumundi School of Rock (now music) was born.  In its inaugural year, the program received warm community support from ECCO, Experience Eumundi, Eumundi State School and other local feeder schools – North Arm, Noosa Pengari Steiner School and Noosa Junior High. The Eumundi School of Music also received much-needed Regional Arts Development Funds to go towards paying for the tuition and fees involved with teaching 20 young musicians.  The ethos behind starting the school was to ignite a passion and love of music performance in the children who were already playing music – by giving them mentoring, stage-craft lessons and a live gig experience. They also have the opportunity to work together in bands with other students and experience creating high quality music together.  Now in its 8th year, Eumundi School of Music is growing in popularity and is bigger and better than ever!  Since we started, we have gifted free music education scholarships to over 250 kids in our community and provided valuable paid employment for local musicians. We’ve seen the emergence of multiple bands like The Feral Cats of Tokyo, APEsHiT and The Subdividers and incredible young singer-songwriters like Layla Barnett and Zara. Our students have performed alongside artists like Tim Rogers, Alex Lloyd, Abby Dobson, Dallas Frasca, Andrea Kirwin and  Jack Carty. 

This three month program gives each student five one-on-one lessons with their individual teachers, learning a set list of predominantly Australian songs. The remaining five lessons see the students combine into bands and work on the songs together under the direction of the musical director, with each teacher supporting their students through the process. Learning Australian songs is important to founder Katie Noonan, who is passionate about supporting homegrown talent and growing the local music scene from an early age.