Resources Archive - Page 12 of 15 - Orchestras Canada/Orchestres Canada

Workplace Harassment in the Arts

Under the Respectful Workplaces in the Arts banner, the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) has released two training videos on workplace harassment in the arts.

One for employers – including Boards of Directors of not-for-profit organizations.

And one for cultural workers – including self-employed artists, contractors and employees.

These animated videos on ‘responding to harassment’ are scenario-based. They have been produced to explain the rights and responsibilities of employers with respect to reports of workplace harassment; and to explain the rights and responsibilities of cultural workers who experience or witness harassment. They come with practical takeaways and best practices to recognize and navigate incidents of harassment from both points of view (employer and worker), and include a questionnaire to test the learner’s recall of the videos’ content.

Diversity and Drivers of Arts Attendance

In June 2018, Business for the Arts released CultureTrack Canada, the results of an online survey of 6,444 Canadians who had participated in a cultural activity between December 2017 and January 2018. Attendees at Orchestras Canada’s 2018 conference in Calgary benefited from a sneak peek at the report’s key findings, and conference attendees requested a more granular analysis of the report’s findings on classical music patrons in particular. Working in collaboration with the other members of Canada’s Performing Arts Alliance, OC helped to commission a more fine-grained analysis of the Culture Track Canada dataset.

The report explores what’s motivating arts attendance among different segments of the Canadian population, and how these motivators influence frequency of attendance at classical music, popular music, musicals, opera, ballet and theatre, as well as art museums and galleries.

Here are three facts we found particularly interesting in the report, to whet your appetite:

Classical music attendance is higher among those who have immigrated to Canada more recently. Among those who were born somewhere else, 18% attend classical music monthly compared to only 10% of those whose parents and grandparents were born in Canada.
Top driving factors for attending classical music varied by the language spoken at home:
- Anglophones: Bettering my emotional well-being; Being able to go by myself; Having grown up participating in it.
- Francophones: Feeling like it gives life a deeper meaning; Experiencing new things.
- Allophones: Being able to go by myself; Feeling like it gives life a deeper meaning; Having fun.
Ethnicity was far less of a determining factor in classical music attendance than one might think. With approximately 12% of the survey sample attending classical music at least once a month, this went as high as 28% in South Asian and Black/African survey participants, and 22% for Middle Eastern survey participants.

Relaxed Performance Visual Guide

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra presented their first Relaxed Performance, “Let’s Dance,” on April 27th, 2019. This performance is designed specifically for people living with autism spectrum disorders, sensory and communication disorders, learning disabilities, or anyone who would benefit from a more casual concert experience.

The Relaxed Performance differed from other TSO concerts in a number of ways:

If patrons need to move around, express themselves vocally, leave the concert hall, or take a break in the quiet room, they are welcome to;
Audience members will have access to a Visual Guide that details the concert experience, step by step, in order to reduce anxiety about it, and a fact sheet with detailed information about the performance itself;
Rows of seats at the back of the hall will be kept empty should guests wish to move away from the sound of the orchestra on stage;
Patrons will have access to a quiet room furnished with comfortable seating, stress-relieving fidgets, and relaxing activities;
The TSO will provide other resources such as sound-dampening headphones;
Specialized training will be provided to musicians, TSO staff, and front-of-house personnel at Roy Thomson Hall by Relaxed Performance Consultant, Rachel Marks.

You can download the Visual Guide prepared for this performance here. Thank you to Aaron McFarlane and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for sharing this with us!

Four Filters of Active Listening

It’s something every symphony orchestra has heard at least once from a teacher. “Oh, my students won’t like that. They can’t handle listening to it, and they think it’s boring”. We know that live music is anything but boring. So how do we equip kids with the tools to understand what they’re hearing?

The Windsor Symphony Orchestra’s education programs focus on developing active listening skills. In active listening, students learn to focus on what they hear and respond to the information presented. Imagine a world in which relationships are developed based on the basic concept of really listening to each other!

The lesson plan, “Four Filters” encourages kids to try new ways of listening. This lesson plan explores melody, harmony, rhythm and visuals, discussing those concepts and using a listen-and-react exercise which helps students identify and describe them in pieces of music.

This year, the four filters were deployed at a partnership concert with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Blindfolded patrons were encouraged to listen for melody, harmony and rhythm in a program, and to consider the emotions that are evoked using these musical elements.

Looking to the future, we have also presented the “four filters” approach to Faculty of Education students, the next generation of teachers. The WSO is committed to bringing active listening to patrons young and old, secure in the knowledge that our community is made stronger when we know how to listen to one another.

You can download the WSO’s ‘Four Filters’ presentation here. Thank you very much to the team at the Windsor Symphony Orchestra for being willing to share this resource with us!

To learn more about this, listen to WSO Music Director Robert Franz’s TEDx talk: Active Listening and Our Perception of Time.

Ontario Orchestra Patrons Research

In the summer of 2018, Orchestras Canada (in collaboration with Ontario Presents) launched a research project on Ontario smaller budget orchestras’ audiences. OC invited orchestras with annual revenues under $1 million to anonymize their patron data, and send the resulting lists of patron postal codes to OC. Using Environics’ powerful PRIZM5 tool, the team at OP then analyzed patron data from 24 different orchestras (in the city of Toronto, in the Golden Horseshoe, and in regional centres from Ottawa to Burlington, North Bay and Sudbury to Kitchener-Waterloo). The end result? An overall picture of smaller budget orchestras’ audiences – plus some nuanced perspective on the City of Toronto, the Golden Horseshoe, and regional orchestra audiences across the province.

Very few smaller-budget groups can afford this kind of sophisticated data analysis on their own, but by pooling member orchestras’ data and working in collaboration with OP, Orchestras Canada was able to offer orchestras some unique insights into orchestras’ audiences, and the catchment areas that they serve. The project was funded in part by Orchestras Canada’s generous donors, who contribute to our research efforts on behalf of Canadian orchestras.

We are thrilled to share with you the final report from Ontario Presents on this research. This is a more detailed expansion of the presentation given by Judy Harquail and Natalie Dewan back in November at OC’s Ontario Small Budget Orchestra Workshop. The report includes a great deal of information. In order to get the most out of it, we suggest you take a look at the following sections:

Page 3 for a basic overview
Page 4 for a picture of the typical orchestra patron in Ontario as a whole
Page 22 for further information on patrons common to all of Ontario
The target set for your region: City of Toronto (pg 9), Suburban GTA (pg 13), or Regional Centres (towns/cities outside of the GTA- pg 17)
Page 22 for tips on how to effectively use this information

You can download the report here.

The report also references the Prizm5 Handbook. You can find this handbook here.

Advocacy Checklist

Advocacy Checklist Download (DOC)
Advocacy Checklist Download (PDF)

Making Friends and Building Allies at your Orchestra

Fostering and strengthening support with all levels of government – municipal, provincial and federal – is important for all orchestras. Having knowledgeable friends and allies is helpful at the best of times; when you really need them, it’s good to know they are there.

To ensure that advocacy and government relations are an ongoing part of your operation, consider making them a regular item at board and staff meetings.

Agree on key messages. These could be highlights of recent achievements, opportunities you foresee and the challenges you face. Keep it upbeat and optimistic, especially in the early stages of a relationship

It’s important to recognize that our elected representatives are busy and have many demands on their time. More often than not, they will be supportive of your orchestra and the work you do – especially if they understand your impact and contribution to your community. It’s up to you to make sure elected representatives know about your orchestra and your work. To help, here is a check list of easy actions for your orchestra to implement. We suggest you review it regularly.

An Advocacy Checklist for your Orchestra

Build relationships with representatives

Invite elected officials to opening night or other key events in your season. Ensure board members are on hand to host them, and prepare your leaders with some key speaking points
Find an opportunity during the season for public recognition of your representatives
Establish an annual meeting between your board chair, staff and artistic leaders, and elected officials to update them on achievements and challenges
Distribute your season brochure to constituency offices, and put elected officials on your email and mailing lists
Engage with elected officials on social media. Follow them and engage positively, especially when there’s good news to share
Look for opportunities to highlight your community engagement activities to elected officials. Consider what might make a great photo opportunity!
Regularly review officials’ newsletters and websites, to see what they are focussed on

Connect with your public funders

Make sure you create a connection with potential funders before applying for a grant. Schedule regular meetings with your key contacts. Make sure they receive regular information about your orchestra and know your achievements, challenges and opportunities
Attend relevant information sessions in your community or on-line
Whether you liked the results or not, always seek feedback from funders, and listen carefully to their advice

Collaborate with other organizations

Join city-wide or regional arts councils
Consider establishing a monthly get-together with colleagues at other arts organizations to share information and insights

Perfect Fifth of Diversity: A framework for self-assessment

At two recent OC member convenings, Orchestras Canada welcomed conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser to talk about equity in the orchestra. Daniel is a member of the OC board, chair of our Equity Committee, and Artist-in-Residence and Community Ambassador with Symphony Nova Scotia. At these events, Daniel presented the Perfect Fifth of Diversity, a discussion tool for orchestras to use in considering their equity work.

As Daniel noted, diversity is going to look different in different communities; but for all organizations, there is a real opportunity to engage with people who don’t yet feel welcome at the orchestra in a way that benefits all involved. To help clarify the starting place, Daniel proposes five questions for orchestras to consider.

1. Who is playing?

This element concerns your musicians, soloists and conductors. Most professional orchestras have an audition process during which applicants for tenure track positions play behind a screen for several rounds before their identity is revealed. Selection processes for music directors, soloists, and per service musicians take various shapes. And smaller budget groups may have more flexibility in their modes of casting. No matter what, are we ensuring that our selection processes address conscious or unconscious bias?

We also know that pathways to a career in classical music rely on early exposure, access to instruments, and inspiring teachers and role models, along with the financial resources to pursue serious study over many years. Auditions present financial barriers, as well, such as paying for flights, hotels, and extra lessons. In the USA, the Sphinx Organization in collaboration with the League of American Orchestras and the New World Symphony have started the National Alliance for Audition Support, a program that provides financial support to Black and Latinx musicians attending auditions.

2. Who is being played?

Does our programming reflect the communities we want to serve, as well as the musical traditions and inspirations we have historically celebrated? Do we want to program music of diverse styles, by a more diverse range of composers, including living, women, and Indigenous composers, and composers of colour? Some audiences are curious to hear works they don’t know, and others will stay away. How do we balance comfort, tradition, and challenge, in a sustainable and artistically sound way? This would see the orchestra of the future both continuing to present beloved classics, and becoming a library of sound that puts itself at the service of diverse styles, traditions and communities.

3. Who is listening?

Are our audiences reflective of the community we are hoping to serve? We need to consider what the access point is for tickets to our concerts, and whether we are programming and marketing our concerts in a way that appeals to a diverse range of audiences. This element looks at how we are making our orchestra accessible to communities that are not only culturally diverse, but also diverse in terms of age, socio-economic status or spectrum-linked diversity. This is important both as a means of better serving our communities, and as a means of growing our audience.

4. Who is deciding?

We need to look at who is in positions of power at our organizations – in artistic leadership roles, in staff leadership roles, and on the board of directors. As well, from whom do we seek input, to ensure diverse perspectives in the decision-making process?

5. How is this being done?

A lot of orchestras’ work in community engagement projects involves collaborating with non-traditional artists and community partners, and these projects present many opportunities for reflection on orchestral culture and approaches. How is power distributed between the music director, soloists and other collaborators in rehearsal and performance spaces? How do we approach time, and how do we make space for exploration in the context of an orchestral service? How might we collaborate in a way that nurtures and gives power to voices outside of the orchestra’s traditional hierarchy?

The questions that Daniel is raising are deliberately non-prescriptive: each orchestra will need to answer these questions in its own way, and reach its own conclusions. Orchestras Canada is excited to be part of the discussion, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Comparative Report Archives

Each year, Orchestras Canada collects and collates financial information and audience numbers from member orchestras and produces a detailed Comparative Report which is then shared among all the participating orchestras. The Summaries are created from the detailed information in the Comparative Report. They provide business snapshots of the Canadian orchestra industry in overview. Detailed information from all orchestras has been consolidated in two ways: by budget size and by regions.

Comparative Report 2022-2023

Comparative Report 2021-2022

Comparative Report 2020-2021

Quick Guide to the 2019-20 Comparative Report Summaries
Comparative Report 2019-20 – Summary by Budget Size
Comparative Report 2019-20 – Summary by Region
Comparative Report 2019-20 – Side-by-side comparison with the 2018-19 Summaries By Budget Size
Comparative Report 2019-20 – Side-by-side comparison with the 2018-19 Summaries By Region

Quick Guide to the 2018-19 Comparative Report Summaries
Comparative Report 2018-19 – Summary by Budget Size
Comparative Report 2018-19 – Summary by Region

Quick Guide to the 2017-18 Comparative Report Summaries
Comparative Report 2017-18 – Summary by Budget Size
Comparative Report 2017-18 – Summary by Region

Quick Guide to the 2016-17 Comparative Report Summaries
Comparative Report 2016-17 – Summary by Budget Size
Comparative Report 2016-17 – Summary by Region

Comparative Report 2015-16 – Summary by Budget Size
Comparative Report 2015-16 – Summary by Region

Quick Guide to the 2014-15 Comparative Report Summaries
Comparative Report 2014-15 – Summary by Budget Size
Comparative Report 2014-15 – Summary by Region

Quick Guide to the 2013-14 Comparative Report Summaries
Comparative Report 2013-14 – Summary by Budget Size
Comparative Report 2013-14 – Summary by Region

For access to summary data from earlier years, please contact Orchestras Canada at [email protected]

Helping People Fall in Love with your Orchestra

At Orchestras Canada’s Ontario Music Directors’ Meeting on January 19^th, we welcomed Carol Kehoe as a special guest. Carol has more than 25 years of experience in leadership roles at arts organizations such as Museum London, the Grand Theatre, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Choir, where she has recently been appointed Executive Director.

We invited Carol because we knew that she could address, in practical and humane ways, the many questions that group members had about their relationship with their orchestra’s governance, audience development, and fundraising efforts.

For members of this group (and many others like them in other parts of Canada), serving as music director is not a purely artistic role. As one of the very few (or perhaps the only) people paid to get things done in their organizations, smaller-budget orchestra music directors are often called upon to get involved in fundraising, strategy development, human resources, volunteer management, public positioning, and beyond.

Fundraising

In Carol’s view, smaller organizations need to be “scrappy” and fight for opportunities to share your stories in your community. An important first step: define your role in the community. Are you THE only orchestra, or do you play a complementary role to other orchestras and musical groups around you? What makes you unique? Do you provide orchestral music to underserved parts of your community? Is your membership distinctive? Is your repertoire unique? It can be useful to look at municipal cultural and strategic plans to see how your goals might align with that of the city or region you are in. How is your orchestra uniquely positioned to help your community reach its goals?

With this vital information in hand, you and your organization can then start discussions with potential partners. It’s not a one-way discussion: you’re looking to listen and learn. If your potential partner doesn’t specifically support the arts, they may be interested in supporting children’s programs, or emerging talent, or one of the other amazing activities your organization does.

Building these relationships takes time, and never really ends. It’s often easier to keep an existing partner than to find a new one, so it’s important to acknowledge the people and organizations who have helped you in the past. Perhaps you, a board member or a musician can call donors to thank them, or write them handwritten notes. What about using special occasions like Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving to send cards, just so they know what their support means to your orchestra?

Governance

Board recruitment is difficult, and it’s only getting harder. While in the past, the business community were encouraged or even told to get involved in the governance of non-profit organizations, this is no longer the case. Volunteers tend to want to be involved in short-term projects, rather than being financially responsible for something long-term.

In much the same way as defining your orchestra’s role in the community before approaching potential donor or sponsor organizations, this is also important when recruiting to your board of directors. Help people fall in love with your organization by finding a set of definable ‘selling points’ for potential new board members. Why should they give their time, connections and money to you? It can be useful to start with low-hanging fruit: work with your nominating committee and go into your community to find people who already love what you do. Get them on board first.

Boards of directors have responsibilities of fiduciary oversight, ensuring that mission and money are aligned. Over time, non-profits have asked our boards to expand their roles, to be all things to all people. We can and do rely on our boards for all kinds of things – from connections, to donations, and, in smaller organizations, even day-to-day orchestra management, operations, and marketing. Whether we want to have a board that’s more hands on, or less, it’s critical to have processes and people to help your orchestra get the right people involved, and to ensure that these partnerships are beneficial for both parties. Music directors, as staff leaders, can help create the environment in which this can happen.

We’d like to thank Carol Kehoe for sharing her time, energy and considerable expertise with OC and our members.

Orchestras in the Ridings: Meeting Materials

In November 2018, members of Orchestras Canada’s Advocacy Committee met with their Members of Parliament to deliver a united message for Canadian orchestras. These meetings were the first phase of an ambitious effort to engage as many of you as possible in meeting with your MPs to share collective messages about the value of orchestras, and the importance of enlightened federal policy and funding programs.

Following this, we asked representatives from Canadian orchestras coast to coast, to request face-to-face meetings in their riding with their MP or MPs during the 2018-2019 Parliamentary break.

The following is a list of materials that can be useful in requesting, preparing for, holding, and following up from a meeting with your elected representative.

To Request a Meeting

If you don’t know who your MP is, follow this link and scroll down to the “find” function, and enter your postal code.
Check our master spreadsheet of all MPs, so you can quickly identify which MPs have already met with orchestra representatives. If you have a choice, please do request a meeting with an MP who are not yet “claimed”. We’d like the messages to be delivered TO as diverse a group as possible, BY as diverse a group as possible.
Customize our template meeting request and send it to your MP, either by email or to the constituency office address listed on our master spreadsheet.

Meeting Tools & Materials

In this folder, you will find a range of useful advocacy tools and materials, tested by our intrepid advocacy committee when they met with their elected officials in November. To prepare thoroughly for your meeting, we encourage you to read through what’s inside:

To request a meeting, you can use this template letter.
To inform yourself beforehand, read through this leave-behind document and OC’s latest submission to the Standing Committee on Finance.
During the meeting, you can use the meeting script we have developed, as well as our Social Media Guide so that OC and other participants can amplify your message. Here are some other tips to keep in mind during your meeting.
After the meeting, make sure to thank your MP, and to let Orchestras Canada know of any feedback by sending us this form.

Advocacy Webinar

On January 17th, 2019, Orchestras Canada’s government relations advisor Micheline McKay discussed the process of setting up, preparing for and holding a meeting with your elected representative, and took questions on this year’s messages. You can access the recording here upon supply of a name, email address and organization. The corresponding slide deck is available here.