Yesterday’s post about the MTT situation at the New World Symphony prompted a number of direct replies from arts managers who were all quite keen to share a wide variety of anecdotes and most took the time to mention their respective organization’s child policy (or lack thereof), all of which made me curious to know more as I’ve never seen any sort of field-wide survey (if you know of one, I’d love to see it).
To that end, today’s post is a trio of queries:
Does your organization encourage parents to bring children to all and/or certain types/series of events?
Does your organization have a child policy?
Does your organization have an official usher or patron services representative policy on how disruptive patrons under a certain age should be addressed?
I’m very curious to see what comes back so thank you in advance for taking the time to leave a comment, I’m sure everyone will benefit from having a broader perspective.
Here’s our policy: “Only children who are mature enough to sit quietly during a concert, without disturbing their neighbors, should attend DPO Classical, Classical Connections, Chamber, and SuperPops series concerts. For parents looking for a way to introduce younger children to music, our Family Series concerts are the perfect opportunity. They are programs designed specifically with children in mind, each one lasting about one hour.”
If a disruptive child does appear in the hall (and this has happened recently), our ushers are directed to ask the child and parent to exit as discretely as possible.
Terrific Paul and I’m just curious, are any of your stage configurations such that the conductor and/or any stage performer have the ability to communicate with an audience member (as is the case at NWS)? If nothing else, this brings up an interesting byproduct related to the trend of making performance environments more intimate.
Here’s our policy: “Only children who are mature enough to sit quietly during a concert, without disturbing their neighbors, should attend DPO Classical, Classical Connections, Chamber, and SuperPops series concerts. For parents looking for a way to introduce younger children to music, our Family Series concerts are the perfect opportunity. They are programs designed specifically with children in mind, each one lasting about one hour.”
If a disruptive child does appear in the hall (and this has happened recently), our ushers are directed to ask the child and parent to exit as discretely as possible.
Terrific Paul and I’m just curious, are any of your stage configurations such that the conductor and/or any stage performer have the ability to communicate with an audience member (as is the case at NWS)? If nothing else, this brings up an interesting byproduct related to the trend of making performance environments more intimate.
Unlike NWS, we don’t have any stage gallery seating, i.e. seating where audience is in the sightline of the conductor.