The Hidden Talent Crisis: Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith Explains Why Cutting Music Programs Is Costing America Its Next Innovators

The Red Hot Chili Peppers’s Chad Smith is betting that music education is key to preserving the creative thinkers businesses need most...

In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson stood on a TED stage and asked a simple question: Do schools kill creativity?

76 million people have watched that talk. It’s still the most-viewed TED Talk in history. It was my honor to sit down with Sir Ken in 2014 and talk about this subject at length, and it’s still one of my most memorable interviews. 

Robinson’s argument was clean. Creativity belongs in education the same way literacy, math, and science do. Instead, we rank it last. We fund it last. And when budgets get tight, we cut it first. That was nearly 20 years ago. Not much has changed. Except Chad Smith is doing something about it.

The Chad Smith Foundation launched in 2025 around three pillars: Inspiration, Access, and Support. This is followed by support via instruments, teachers, and places to play. The After-School Music Program, known as AMP, launched in Milwaukee in March 2026; Smith chose Milwaukee deliberately because his brother, Brad, and nephew, Lewis, who serves as executive director, are based there. It’s a pilot, intentional and methodical, built to figure out what actually works before scaling anywhere else.

For more information, visit chadsmithfoundation.org

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