Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
In April 2021, I had the pleasure of being a guest speaker for Dr. Michael W. Millar’s Nonprofit Music course at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona). As a required course for Cal Poly Pomona’s music industry majors, the students cover a broad range of topics and my session focused on one of the more interactive sessions in the form of listening to and refining elevator pitches. Specifically, pitches …
We live in a time where the Top 0.1% own more than the bottom 80% but we hear more and more about donor burnout. US nonprofit performing arts organizations, and by extension artists, rely on the largess of these large donors so why are they not stepping up to strengthen safety nets to similar levels seen in countries like Germany? The answers require going all the back to the Revenue Act …
Like a lot of music schools, orchestra faculty at the DePaul University have to adjust to the realities of Zoom based education. To that end, Michael Lewanski, Associate Professor of Instrumental Ensembles at DePaul was kind enough to invite me as a guest for one of those Zoom sessions. After some back and forth on the topic, we settled on an updated version of my Realities of an Orchestral Life program. …
My thanks to the folks from Arts Alliance Illinois for inviting me to participate in yesterday’s webinar on Arts and Technology. My portion of the webinar covered a post-net neutrality action plan and I wanted to take a moment to share the Google Slide Deck with everyone. Like most of my slide decks, this includes #CopiousSpeakerNotes so that you can get everything of value from the webinar right out of the …
I recently wrapped up a workshop for Americans for the Arts and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts on Website User Experience with a terrific group of participants taking part in a two-year capacity building initiative titled Arts Marketing and Audience Engagement in the 21st Century: Building the Capacity of Pennsylvania’s Cultural Sector. It was a terrific afternoon; we covered a lot of ground and worked across a variety of skill levels …