Drew McManus on the orchestra business.
Theater management wonk Joe Patti who operates the blog Butts In Seats took the time to write in with regard to the recent series of docent articles. He had some good observations and a few questions: A great deal of what you wrote fired my imagination. I am a real proponent of getting volunteers involved and rewarding them. The problem I have faced is that administration looks upon their help as a …
The final installment in this series will outline how orchestras can adopt and develop their own docent program similar to the Denver Zoo system. In Part 1 I detailed the similarities between zoos and orchestras and Part 2 provided a comprehensive look at what motivated individuals to become a volunteer docent as well as how the three major stakeholders in that organization perceive the impact of the program on the zoo’s success. …
To continue where we left off yesterday, we will begin to learn how the Denver Zoo docent program enables members of the community to become active participants in helping the zoo achieve its stated mission. In order to fully understand how much of an impact the docent program has on the organization, I conducted a study involving the three primary stakeholders in the program; the volunteer docents, animal keepers, and zoo administrators. …
062Certainly, a number of US based professional orchestras maintain docent programs, the bulk of which focus primarily on children’s educational outreach programs in the public schools. One of the largest of these programs utilizes approximately 40 volunteers that lecture visiting school children on the music they are going to listen to and they also visit classrooms to teach children about classical music. Although these programs certainly generate positive results, they are representative …
Step One – Establishing the Problem Getting people interested in classical music is easy. The product sells itself with little effort beyond that from the extremely talented musicians required to create it. So why are orchestras fighting to find replacements to plug the holes in their rapidly eroding patron base? Why is it difficult to get more than 4% of a community’s population interested in their local orchestra? Why is it …