Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Charest.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
“Kids Imagine Nation” consists of myself (Rachel Charest), my husband Aaron Bertram, and our Best Friend Vincent Walker (aka Beatz The Robot). We are a Synergistic Musical Experience. We write and perform Family Music as a band. But we are so much more than a band. Our show is more like a Musical Theatre performance meets a rock and roll band for kids and families.
Our characters have backstories and our shows have storylines like a musical theatre show. We create everything ourselves: from the scripts with dialogue to the music and lyrics to the choreography to the costume design, set design, lighting, sound, and props. We perform our original Live Shows at The Disneyland Resort, Santa’s Village Theme Park, and in various Theaters, City Events, Libraries, and schools around Southern California.
But Kids Imagine Nation is not only a live Rock Musical for Families. We have two other components to our world: A WebSeries and Music Education Classes. In our WebSeries, you get to know our characters throughout our Adventure Story episodes, you also will find Music Videos for our songs on our WebSeries, as well as Educational Vignettes for children. Our families who are into our WebSeries get to come see one of our TV-style adventures play out in real life at our Live Musical Shows… and vice versa. Our Families who meet us at The Disneyland Resort or their local City Event can continue the adventure at home by getting to know us in depth in our WebSeries.
Our third component to Kids Imagine Nation is Music Education. We have taught in-person Music Classes at various schools throughout LA and Orange County for the past ten years. On March 16th, with the onset of COVID-19 we moved all of our In-Person Music Classes to an online format… And a wonderful thing happened… All-of-a-sudden we were able to connect our community Online. In the past, we only taught Music at a small handful of Private Schools. We had Kids Imagine Nation friends who would come to our shows and ask how they could take Music Class with us. Now that we offer our Music Class Online, we had families who know us from our WebSeries, or families who know us from our Live Shows, who could now interact with us and learn about Music with us too.
We LiveStream our Music Classes through our Private WebSite every morning Monday-Friday. We have combined our love for Music Education, performing, and Video Production to create an interactive Music TV Show style Music Class. The kid’s stream Music Class live with their adult, who can chat with us throughout the Music Class, acting as a conduit between us and the students as we ask questions and give them shoutouts throughout the class. We have Guest Musicians come on the show to play their instruments, and we sing, dance, and learn about Musical Instruments and Music Theory.
That is basically where we are at today, lol. But how we got there… is quite a long story as well, haha. In a nutshell, The three of us met at Disneyland. We have all performed there in entertainment in various roles and shows. Aaron and Vince have been performing at the resort with their ska band, Suburban Legends, for many years as well. Aaron and Vince met and formed their ska band in High School. Aaron and Rachel met at Disneyland, both work at Disneyland, got engaged at Disneyland, and actually got Married at Disneyland as well. While we had both performed in various shows at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, separately, we had always dreamed of performing in the SAME show together at The Disneyland Resort. With the creation of our own original show, we have been able to make that dream come true, and perform this show together at one of our favorite places in the world.
Both Aaron and myself studied Musical Theatre throughout our childhood and college years. Additionally, I grew up with a Mother who was focused on Early Childhood Education and I ended up studying that as well. Aaron and I both spend time working in Early Childhood Education and naturally ended up combining our love for Musical Theatre with our experiences in Early Childhood Education and Music Education for this age group as well. Aaron and Vince’s experiences as Internationally touring musicians also has a major influence on our sound and style as well.
We just love what we do and we hope to be able to continue to reach more children and families with our world of music, creativity, and imagination. We are passionate about creating a magical, uplifting, diverse, inclusive, encouraging, empowering world for all the children we interact with. And we love sharing our personal joy for music, theatre, and dance.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has NOT been a smooth road, lol. We continue to struggle to this very day. Our most current struggle is, of course, at the forefront of our minds. With the onset of COVID-19, our jobs immediately became one of the most unsafe situations out there for the developing situation with the virus. Within the past two years, although they weren’t easy, we felt that we were finally getting to the point where we could possibly work Full-Time with Kids Imagine Nation. We were performing about 250 shows per year, and slowly moving more and more of our work from other performing, teaching, and DJ roles to more exclusively Kids Imagine Nation. Because 100% of what we do involves large crowds of people singing together, every one of our shows has had to be canceled for the foreseeable future. Summer is our most busy and profitable time of year for Kids Imagine Nation, and we were so excited for our new 2020 show.
We are extremely grateful to continue to be creative in the Virtual atmosphere with both our new Virtual version of our Live Musical Show, as well as our Virtual Music Classes… however, our income was drastically cut to an extremely small percentage of what we normally make. It’s definitely a struggle to get up every day and create and produce new content all day, every day, at a fraction of what we need to fully pay our bills and put food on the table. All of our contracted shows were canceled without payment. And all but 3 of our 100 Summer shows did not opt in for a Virtual Show option to replace the show they’d book. We completely understand that everyone is riding this unusual storm together, although we may all be in slightly different boats. And we are extremely grateful to our Kids Imagine Nation followers for their support and participation in all our Online Education and Performances as well. We are so excited that we can now interact daily with some of our friends from out of state, and we are excited for what the future holds.
There have been numerous challenges and struggles trying to create a product from the ground up that people would connect with and participate in vs. something they already know and love on a mass scale of popularity like a Disney or Universal property for example. And I’m sure I could go into great detail there. On a personal level, I have also struggled with multiple health challenges that threatened my physical ability to perform my shows and I’ve spent countless hours, dollars, and tactics to heal my body so that I can physically do what I love to do.
The past has always been a struggle well worth it. We believe in walking to the beat of our own drum and creating a road less traveled for ourselves that follows our passions regardless of how challenging that may be. It’s a challenge to get noticed, to constantly be hustling to get enough people to value what we have to offer, enough to continue to fund the dream. We put directly back into the project, what we earn, and we are grateful to be able to do it whenever we can. I’ve known since I was a very small child that I would sing and perform every moment of my life that I could, and I will pursue that every chance I get.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
I think what sets us apart from other family or children’s musicians is that we are not a band, we are an experience; we are a world. We are definitely very inspired by and influenced by the world of Disney and Theme Parks and Fairy tales and fully immersive experiences. We don’t just show up and sing our songs.
Our Live Show comes with so much thought behind it in the areas of story, music, song, dance, props, backdrops, special effects, and even a large TV monitor with interactive elements throughout the show. Our WebSeries Stories and Music Videos help create that immersive world and help establish real friendships with our followers as they get to know us and our world.
Our main storyline in the WebSeries includes Rachel and Aaron (neighbors and friends) and their Robot friend Beatz. We have a Club House Home Base and like to help our friends in our neighborhood. We take phone calls and help anyone who comes to us with a problem, with the use of magic and imagination.
I place great importance on featuring as many of my fellow performers as I can in our WebSeries and highlighting their talents as well. We have so many fellow artist friends and we all know the struggle of constantly hustling to be able to do what we love the most. We love to be able to perform with our friends and feature their talents in our productions as often as possible. I take special care to highlight the talented women and minority performers I know because I am very passionate about representing women and minorities in empowering and positive roles to children. This is important to me, so I am proud that we are able to do this. I think it is very important that children learn, from an early age, to value and respect people who are different from themselves, and I think we can contribute in this way.
One of our major future goals is to be able to fully fund our WebSeries so that it is an actual money and job maker for both ourselves and our performer friends, vs. the passion project it is at the moment.
We are known for imagination, creativity, and musical fun. What sets us apart is our synergistic and immersive world. We are most proud of how hard we work, our choices (always learning and striving to improve in this area) for inclusivity, and the fact that we never give up on growing our world into something that could not only allow us to live our passion for an actual living but that one day we could help other performers and creators live their passions as well.
What were you like growing up?
Growing up, I was always passionate about singing from day 1. As a very young child, I said that I would be a professional singer when I grew up. I have always been passionate about live musical theatre and fully immersing yourself in that imaginative world. The passion for singing and theatre utterly consumed me.
As I have heard from a lot of performers, I experience a juxtaposition of being painfully shy and introverted at school, with a longing for an extrovert-style form of expression on stage where I could be not only who I really was, confidently, but experience taking on lots of other personalities and roles as well. Expressing my emotions musically and theatrically seemed like the only true expression of my feelings.
I created home video productions using my siblings and cousins as performers and also made audio recordings of songs and radio show presentations at home as well. I would also create and produce live shows and musical performances staring myself, my siblings, and my cousins as well throughout my childhood. As my mother started to notice my interests she enrolled me in vocal lessons and eventually also dance and acting lessons as well. And I continued and currently continue to always improve my art education and practice.
I was also always interested in visual art, drawing, and painting. And everything magical infiltrated into all these areas of The Arts. I was obsessed with Disney musicals, singing Disney songs, and drawing Disney characters.
I have also always been passionate about equal respect and opportunities for women and minorities since a very young age as well… and often felt like the world of theatre and the arts was a place where unreached goals of social equality could be achieved and presented for the world to absorb and mirror when life imitates art.
Music and Theatre has always felt like a way of understanding the world, accurately expressing the world, and also inspiring change and beauty in the world.
Pricing:
- Live Virtual Show (Virtual Birthday Parties, Virtual Events, etc) $425.00
- Online Music Class Subscription ($50 per month per household, 10 LiveStreams per week)
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kinMusic.net
- Phone: (949) 354-2546
- Email: rachel@kidsimagineinc.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/kidsimaginenation?igshid=32pn9kwi11v1
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/kidsimaginenation
- Other: Tik Tok: “Kidsimaginenation”
Image Credit:
Briahna F Photography (Downtown Disney Photo), Jenni-Kate Deshon (Headshot)
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