Here’s A Great Idea For Connecting To Your Community

If you’re looking for a way to connect with your audience that also demonstrates your organization’s commitment to the community, consider having musicians perform at vaccination centers. I’ve seen a few groups talking about this idea and with proper planning, it has the potential for becoming a real win-win scenario.

Connecting health and wellness to classical music is something groups have been exploring over the pandemic and this idea dovetails nicely with that approach. This should be an easy sell to donors and board members when it comes to funding for musician salaries and any safety related expenses.

Tip: when thinking about locations, consider mass vaccination centers. They provide more space (increased safety) and potentially better acoustics than small neighborhood and facility locations.

Do your due diligence, make health and safety of musicians and staff a priority, and don’t even think about structuring it as a fee-based service.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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