Plugged In to Move Out of Needham Next Year

April 27, 2026
• The music education youth program will leave Needham for Framingham in February 2027.

Plugged In Band Program, where about 1,400 regional students have learned to play instruments and form bands and friendships, will end its 25-year stint in Needham early next year.

The nonprofit organization, located at 40 Freeman Place, will move to 541 Concord St. in Framingham, about 10 miles west. Its current property was purchased by Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, which has bought up surrounding sites in an effort to expand.

The Plugged In community took a “final bow” of sorts on Sunday, commemorating the end of an era for the longtime program, which offers band lessons, private tutoring, summer camp and community offerings.

The current spring and upcoming fall session will both take place in Needham. Once the fall session wraps in mid-January, the organization will start moving equipment over to its Framingham space, which has yet to be built out. They plan to still maintain a presence in Needham through other programs.

Its Freeman Place location sits at around 1,550 square feet, with three in-house band rooms and an auxiliary band space in an adapted garage. The new space in Framingham is 8,800 square feet — nearly six times the size. The organization considered locations in Needham, but they were all too expensive to buy or build out to fit their needs, admin said.

Apart from the expansion, the Framingham site will offer better soundproofing, dedicated private lesson rooms, a new sensory room and an overall improved experience for students, said Plugged In Associate Director Dan Croft. They’ll also be able to custom the space, depending on the need.

“We’ve done our best to soundproof the walls in here and stuff, but it’s such an old building, it’s all horsehair and plaster,” Croft said at the Needham space. “When you have two band rooms that share a wall, there’s always bleed through. We make it work, here for nine years in this current location, and it’s worked fine, but being able to [have] our space reflect the quality of the music education that the students are getting is really exciting to us.”

Plugged In previously occupied 20 Freeman Place, two buildings down, and spent many years prior on Garden Street.

Ahead of 25-year anniversary in the fall and the move out of Needham, Executive Director and Co-founder Sandra Rizkallah said she is feeling gracious, both for the support the program’s received and the impact she’s observed.

“It was the village that got us through to this point, which is a transformational moment for Plugged In,” said Rizkallah, who grew up in Needham. “I’m excited because I feel that with the very diverse community in Framingham, we can even expand and deepen the impact that we have as an organization and that makes me really happy.”

Seventy-four students are currently enrolled in band class, and 64 take private lessons, according Program Manager Matthew Cunningham. Until about five years ago, the vast majority of participants were Needham-based, but now, most students come from Boston and the Metro West, Croft said. That made selling in Needham more palatable, though Croft still acknowledged change may be hard.

“The students that we do have in Needham, it obviously will be a little bit more of a drive to the new location in Framingham,” he said. “I’m very confident that we’ll hang on to the majority of them, because they have such a positive experience. They build friendships and relationships with their teachers and their bandmates and everything, [so] I’m sure that the little bit of extra travel time won’t be a hindrance for most of them.”

Plugged In finalized the sale, after some negotiation, in December 2025.

The demographics of the program have changed in other ways, too. For much of Plugged In’s existence, about 15-20% of its student population had a diagnosed disability, but now, that’s closer to 60-65%, Croft said. He attributes that growth to other disability-minded arts programs losing funding, as well as Plugged In’s value of “radical inclusivity.”

One central issue, however, is that the Needham building isn’t ADA compliant. Some band rooms can’t accommodate a wheelchair. Students with mobility issues sometimes can’t reach the only bathroom, located up a flight of stairs. Croft said the organization has an agreement with the Chestnut Street Domino’s where students can use the bathroom there.

In Framingham, everything will be located on the first floor, with ramps at the entry, larger rooms and textured surfaces at doorways for people with visual impairments, Croft said.

Students with and without disabilities work together, which breeds opportunities for learning, collaboration and true community, administration said. Nearly all of it is student-driven, Cunningham said.

“The idea for a lot of students that they can be in a band is something really cool and unique to them. We match students together, but at that point, they create their own band name, they pick their own songs, they choose basically everything themselves,” Cunningham said. “We have, at this point, bands who have been together for years and still working with us… It goes beyond just, ‘Oh, I go here for class,’ but it’s like, ‘No, this is my social group. This is my performance group.’”

As Croft discussed the move, the Commuter Rail sounded its horn as it passed along the side of the building, just a few feet away. While perhaps a hindrance or annoyance to other residents, the train horns have a special place at Plugged In.

“We have lots of students on the [Autism] spectrum, and many of them love the train. We even have train schedules,” Croft said, pointing to a printed schedule by his desk. “The train has always been a begrudgingly loved part of our existence here, and probably one of the reasons why we were able to get the space to begin with. It’s hard to complain that there’s a rock band program in your neighborhood when the commuter rail is blasting through many times a day.”

Students will also miss the nearby Nicholas’s Pizza, though one staffer has already volunteered to pick up the beloved pizza and drive it to Framingham.

With Framingham’s large immigrant population and socioeconomic diversity, Rizkallah said she sees a need for access to music education there. That makes their love all the more important.

Plugged In will continue to host their monthly open mic at the Center at the Heights and plan to take part in the Fourth of July parades and stay involved with the Charles River Regional Chamber. The move is purely physical, Rizkallah emphasized.

“We love Needham. That’s our hometown,” Rizkallah said. “We’re always gonna be part of Needham. Needham will always be part of us.”