Today we’d like to introduce you to Anne Kelly-Saxenmeyer.
Anne, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
PLAY began with my son, Jack. When he was born, in 2002, my husband, James, and I were both freelancers, so we were lucky to be able to arrange our schedules around being with him. Neither of us had ever imagined ourselves working with children and families, but the experience of those first years with Jack—learning how to be parents, re-reading all of our favorite children’s books, discovering music with him, painting together in our kitchen, and just following his interests—felt so much more exciting than anything we were doing professionally at the time that it kind of took over our lives.
By the time Jack was two, we had incorporated our business and begun to offer a licensed parent-and-child music program in rented rooms. A year later, with a following of about sixty families, we moved to our current address in Mid-Wilshire, where we began to realize our goal of offering high-quality music and art activities for families with young children in a space designed to build community. Though neither of us had planned to be in this field, we had skills that translated. My background was in writing and dance, which both help when it comes to curriculum, and James was an actor with a marketing degree, who had also been a long-term substitute teacher at some of LA’s private schools. How to be business owners, we both learned on the fly (with a little help from business planning services at the SBA).
When it came to designing PLAY, we were very lucky to have befriended in the park another set of new parents, Brian Wilson and Renee Dake Wilson (Dake Wilson Architects), who shared our enthusiasm for the idea and had the expertise to realize it. They brought architectural services and interior design, but also developed our logo with us and built custom furniture for the space, all on a rather tight budget.
When we opened, the community of families around PLAY (which was originally called, “Play Cafe”) embraced us, and those first few years felt a lot like hosting a big play date every day. We had to learn very quickly, and we did insane things. Before we had a devoted art room (we expanded into the space next door in 2007), we would schedule music class and “Messy Art” hours back-to-back in our one classroom, leaving ourselves about fifteen minutes to convert the music room into a fully equipped art space by lugging in a giant roll of AstroTurf, tarps, several easels, and a load of supplies—and then back again, leaving not a trace of paint, when it was over. In the early days of our curriculum-based art program, Messy Mixed Media, I decided to turn this same classroom into an undersea world involving black lights, whale recordings, completely papered walls, bubbles, spray bottles of paint wielded freely by preschoolers and modeling sand. I would never do this project again, but it was amazing.
For most of 2009, we worked on our biggest project for PLAY: developing our original, early-childhood music program, PLAY music, and producing the recordings to accompany it. At the time, we were using the same, internationally recognized music program that we started the business within 2004. While it was a big risk to step away from that, we wanted to create something that was our own and being music lovers, we felt strongly that we could make recordings that would be developmentally appropriate and also equally enjoyable for kids and their grown-ups. This project required learning many new skills, especially for me, being more involved in the curriculum and production work. For the skills we couldn’t learn, again, the perfect people showed up; among them, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Willie Aron, who co-produces all of our CDs and wrote the original songs that families most associate with PLAY music. We have continued to build on PLAY music over the years, and for me, it has been the most rewarding part of our work. Now going on its seventh birthday, the program includes two years of non-repeating curriculum and over a hundred recordings featuring a variety of wonderful artists. It serves around 200 families per session at PLAY.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t think there is a small business without challenges. We were certainly not prepared for how much work it would be. (One of the unique challenges of a child-centered business is that our clients grow up so quickly. Even the most devoted PLAY kids leave us within a few years.)
Fortunately, James and I like working together, and dividing up the tasks at PLAY came naturally for us because we have different strengths and interests. We also have a wonderful staff, including teachers who have been with us for years and are like family, and some great people who’ve joined us more recently.
I know that working at PLAY has made me stronger and better at communicating, and I think that our staff members, past and present, would say the same. Even when there are difficulties, I feel that we have a way to make a positive impact on families and children, and that’s the most important thing.
Please tell us about PLAY.
One of the things I’m most proud of is that even 12 years in, we’re always striving to improve everything at PLAY. The road has been frustratingly slow at times, partly because we’ve chosen to continue splitting our time between work and being the sole caregivers to our kids. Our next goal is to bring our curriculum to more families, including those who are simply out of our area, and those who don’t have access to programs like ours.
Over the years, I’ve gotten to know many families who have really connected with PLAY. They’ve taken several sessions of PLAY music, their kids starting as babies and leaving once they were singing all the songs themselves. They’ve made their first paintings and built their first projects in our art room. They’ve played and had stories read to them for hours and hours in our community area, and they’ve made friends there (both the kids and the grown-ups). And they’ve told us how much it meant to them. To be a small part of that is a privilege. We’ve also been fortunate to experience PLAY from the other side for the past few years with our three-year-old daughters, Lola and Mazzy, and seeing how much they enjoy it has been a great reward.
Contact Info:
- Address: 5814 W. Third St., LA 90036
- Website: www.play-losangeles.com, www.play-notes.com
- Phone: 323.988.1189
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @play_los_angeles
- Facebook: @playmusic.losangeles
- Twitter: @LAPlayCafe
- Yelp: yelp.com/biz/play-los-angeles-2
- Other: soundcloud.com/play-music-3
Image Credit:
artroom1: photo credit, PLAY
artroom 2 & 3: photo credit, Orit Harpaz
communityarea 1, 2 & 3: photo credit, PLAY
all “musicclass” photos: photo credit, Orit Harpaz
