Engaging the Community

The National Arts Centre Orchestra faces a slightly different problem than most orchestras when it comes to music education. Our mandate is both local and national in scope. Playing both roles is no easy task in a country the size of Canada. Our strategy has been to place great emphasis on community involvement, as this is the only way we can bring meaningful artistic experiences to the varied faces of Canadian society.

Since Pinchas Zukerman became Music Director in 1998, we have made education a part of our core mission and focus on three key areas – young audience development, young artist training, and the production of education resource materials. I would like to share two of our programs that have been successful in establishing processes that build social capital and inspire creativity and partnerships within communities.

The first is our national and international NAC Orchestra Performance and Education tours (see Claire Speed’s article, describing these tours). These tours, offered annually, seek to foster cultural exchanges amongst elementary students and our musicians (see Doug Burden’s article for the musician’s view of these tours), support artist development, and provide much needed music resources to teachers in marginalized communities. Our post-tour contacts with the communities we have visited, through the NAC Reconnexions program, take the form of on-site residencies, broadband teaching, or invitations to Ottawa, and re-energize our relationships.

The second is the recently launched three-year Music Ambassador Program to support music teaching in rural elementary schools in Alberta and Saskatchewan. This past year, teaching artists in both provinces made 100 school visits and held 10 teacher clinics to support classroom teachers. Together with the support of organizations such as the Calgary Philharmonic, Edmonton Symphony, Regina Symphony and Saskatoon Symphony, we have managed to establish an effective, community-based program that brings classical music to those who have scarce resources for music-making.

Partnering with local arts organizations has been central to our success. But many challenges lie ahead of us. We are, after all, a symphony orchestra. We cannot replace the music specialists and music resources lacking in schools; we can’t replace the ever-changing family unit where time and financial resources for lessons, practice, and attending concerts are scarce; and we can’t promise the incredible young artists we train that a ready market-place will understand the value of their talent in the years to come.

So we continue to actively look for collaborative opportunities. At a recent symposium organized by the Canadian Music Educators Association, Coalition for Music Education in Canada and the National Arts Centre called “Uniting our Voices,” symphony orchestras were brought together for the first time with over 40 organizations representing industry, lobby groups, academia, and both English and French music education associations to discuss the future of music education in Canada. Our moderator began by challenging us to prepare for some “discomfort” over the two days of the meeting.

He continued by identifying four characteristics playwright John Murrell associates with artists and creative people – restless, dissatisfied, secretive, and stubborn. I was startled. I expected to hear words like innovative, visionary, inspired, and resourceful; these are, after all, what we strive for in our work. But the discomfort came when we realized that Murrell’s description was often not far off the mark. And the result was that our collective message on the importance of music education sounded more like a confused crowd than a chorus. The message was too dilute to have much of an impact on those who have the greatest ability to effect change, the nation’s policy makers.

That’s where joining forces with disparate partners who share the same concerns is so essential. As a result of the symposium, we have plans to establish a steering committee with national representation from varied stakeholders in music education as well as a networking and advocacy infrastructure. We committed to a new paradigm of collective responsibility in order to realize bold visions for our common future.

My hope for this discussion is that we can think of further ways to work as a collective to effect change. Whether we speak about outreach, in-reach, engagement, dialogue, capacity-building, fundraising or friend-raising – we need, as cultural brokers, to learn effective ways to work together and advocate a unified message about music and its cultural relevance first to each other and then to our communities.