Local Businesses Team Up To Send Child to Natick's School of Rock

As lovers of music, Kelsey Roth & Matt Steinberg of Exhibit A Brewing in Framingham know how important music can be in a child's life. The brewery, having recently planned an event to release a series of test batches known as "Demo Tapes", came up with the idea to partner with their local neighbors Avidia Bank & Rise Above Foundation.

"Collaboration with Avidia Bank really started by both of us being involved in the community. We just kept seeing each other and realized, quickly, that we have a lot of similar values as far as what a company needs to do to build community and help their community," says Kelsey Roth, General Manager of Exhibit A Brewing.

Roth, who designed all of the artwork for the Demo Tape cans, explains the choice of name for the series. "In music, a demo tape is something that is not quite there yet but you want to get it out to the public as a rough draft so to speak." Connecting this to the brewing industry, Steinberg & Roth chose to release test batches of brews they'd been working on and throw a festival at the brewery to celebrate their release.

Yet Exhibit A didn't just want to throw a successful event-they came up with the idea to donate portion of the Demo Tape Fest proceeds, and collaborate with Avidia Bank in brewing a special test batch to donate a portion of can sales as well. Their charity of choice: Roth & Steinberg wanted to send a foster child to classes at the School of Rock in Natick through the Rise Above Foundation. To their surprise, the School of Rock also agreed to kick in for half of the tuition.

Steinberg says Avidia Bank was extremely hands on with the collaboration brew, even coming into the brewery to help throughout the entire brewing and canning process.

"Demo Tape 19 is a hoppy IPA with mosaic," says Steinberg, who was visibly excited about how much fun it had been working as a team. "We joined forces to raise money for Rise Above, which at the time we didn't realize we shared equal focus on that," says Steinberg, noticing that both Exhibit A and Avidia Bank had ties to the foundation. "It was kind of a perfect mix of make a beer, raise some money."

To learn more about the collaboration brew or how you can contribute to the cause, watch the full video.