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Lessons from the First Canada Council Engage and Sustain Results

During our 2018 National Conference, OC consultant Thérèse Boutin presented two sessions that looked into the results of orchestras from the Canada Council for the Arts’ Engage and Sustain funding program. The slide deck from this presentation is available here.

The following interview with Thérèse was originally published on May 18th, 2018 in anticipation of her sessions at the conference.

Thérèse Boutin and the Engage and Sustain Program

As part of our 2018 conference in Calgary, Orchestras Canada will be welcoming experts and thought leaders from musical and arts organizations across the country. Many of these, are current or former leaders of Canadian orchestras, including the delightful Thérèse Boutin. Thérèse has served as administrative leader of both the Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières and the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, and was also Chair of the Orchestras Canada Board for two years.

Thérèse’s impressive resume and experience have given her significant insider information into the workings of national granting organizations, and it is in this area that she is currently doing research for Orchestras Canada, specifically with regards to the Canada Council’s Engage and Sustain grant.

This grant program is designed as a means of ongoing support for arts organizations in their presentation of artistic activities that engage a diverse range of people in their communities and beyond. It also aims to encourage organizations to reflect the diversity of these communities through their staffing, programming and public engagement responsibilities.

We recently had the opportunity to learn more about Thérèse’s research, during which she has spent a significant amount of time analysing grant applications from orchestras across the country to better understand what the Canada Council’s peer assessment committees were looking for.

Thérèse BoutinCould you tell us a bit about the research you are currently undertaking for Orchestras Canada on the Canada Council’s Engage and Sustain program?
We put a call out for orchestras who wanted to be involved in this study on a voluntary basis to send us a copy of their Engage and Sustain grant application. Fifteen orchestras agreed to participate: ten in the Catalyst category (orchestras with a budget of less than $2 million), and five in the Institution category (orchestras with a budget of more that $2 million). From this cross-section, we had a wide variety of applications to analyse.

Did you notice any particular differences or trends between the different grant applications that you received?
I haven’t yet completely finished, but I have been able to figure out some trends – less in terms of what orchestras need to do, and more in terms of how orchestras interpreted the application form and questions. That’s what I found to be the most interesting – the Canada Council for the Arts form is the same for everyone, but each orchestra interpreted the questions in a different way. This isn’t to say that their responses weren’t well thought out, but rather that there were no two grant applications that looked the same.

And what happened in terms of the results of these applications?
Each orchestra was successful in their application, but there were some who received increased funding, and others who did not. My goal isn’t to lecture those who didn’t get increased funding this year. Rather, I wanted to see if each orchestra expressed their message clearly, and if they were effective in bringing this to the forefront of their application. I also wanted to see if there was anything else they might have included, or ideas that they could have presented in other ways. This study is designed to collate a series of best practices for grant applications and to shed light on some of the “red flags” that orchestras might want to address. I’m working with a wealth of extraordinary information that I could do so much with, but unfortunately I only have an hour for my workshop!

Are you analysing applications from this year only, or from previous submissions as well?
The Catalyst orchestras sent me their applications for this year, and the next two years, while the Institution orchestras sent me their applications just for this year and next year. I don’t have access to their older applications, so I can’t comment on what people wrote in the past. However, I can certainly say that the Canada Council’s expectations have greatly changed over this time. We are all a little resistant to change and I noticed that several orchestras (some more than others) managed to fall back into old habits in their applications. It happens – people have other demands on their time, and it can be difficult to prioritize in a busy workplace.

Do you have anything else to say about these applications? Or any advice to give to artists applying to these kinds of grants?
I found them to be very interesting – if I was lucky enough to be independently wealthy, I’d spend the whole of the next year travelling across the country to attend some of the projects mentioned. There are wonderful concerts and activities happening, but there is always room for improvement.

It hasn’t been my goal to give advice from this study. Rather, the idea was to allow orchestras the opportunity to see places where they could have framed things in a different way; to see where they hadn’t been clear enough, where they hadn’t understood the thrust of the questions, or where they could have found a more original way to answer the questions they were given. I’m very happy and thankful for the orchestras who agreed to take part!

The Middle Space: Cultivating Equity and Diversity in Canadian Orchestras

As part of our 2018 National Conference, Ethnomusicologist Parmela Attariwala and equity arts consultant Soraya Peerbaye presented the findings of their research, conducted on behalf of Orchestras Canada and supported by the Leadership for Change grant program, on Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility in the orchestral sector.

You can find a recording of this presentation here.

The accompanying slides can be found here

The following interview with Soraya and Parmela was originally published on May 25th, 2018.

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility with Soraya Peerbaye and Parmela Attariwala

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility are perhaps not words traditionally associated with the classical music institution, but they are integral to corporate, political and Canadian culture. As part of our upcoming national conference, Orchestras Canada will be hosting Soraya Peerbaye and Parmela Attariwala who will lead two sessions on these subjects and will be sharing the research they have been doing for us. Soraya is a Toronto-based writer, curator and consultant who focuses on equity and diversity in the arts. Parmela is also based in Toronto, and is a violinist/violist, composer and ethnomusicologist with research interests in areas as varied as multiculturalism and democracy in music, improvisation, and the music of medieval India. We had the pleasure of speaking with them last week, to talk about decolonization in the arts and where Canadian orchestras are in terms of conversations about inclusivity, diversity, equity and accessibility.

Parmela and Soraya started their research with a series of questions, the purpose of which were to find out what orchestras are currently doing in the field of inclusivity, diversity, equity and accessibility; to find out what is currently working and what is not, and to find areas where Canadian orchestras need help, and how Orchestras Canada might be able to provide this.

The list of questions involved in this project grew almost immediately. Soraya says, “It didn’t take very long for us to ask about the conversation that is so current in the arts sector around decolonization. What are the implications of that word politically and culturally? What are the possibilities of that in relation to an art form that emerged out of white European cultural traditions?” From these new sets of questions, they wanted to map some of the conversations happening on these subjects in the orchestral sector, and saw that these were the same as those happening in other art forms.

Soraya and Parmela met with key stakeholders in the orchestral sector, largely Executive and Artistic Directors, to talk about the ways in which their organizations engage with these ideas. “We quickly realized that because of who comes into this art form, and who rises to positions of authority within it, we were still speaking primarily to white artists and practitioners,” Soraya says, “We hosted a number of round tables with Indigenous artists, creators and musicians…to give space for a richer dreaming. I’m a little hesitant to use these words, but this idea of a wider frame is very important for me. To move towards something, we need to envision it. We wanted to know not only what is happening, but also what we’re working towards.”

As highly active artists themselves, Soraya and Parmela have the fortune of being able to look at recurring problems within their art forms from dual perspectives as both outsiders and insiders. “I’ve been critiquing the institution of the orchestra since I became an ethnomusicologist.”  Parmela says, “I’ve continually brought a culturally reflective lens to my workplace.” This ability to look holistically at the orchestra as an institution has allowed them to engage differently with the way that we speak about orchestras and orchestral music. Parmela explains, “For example, the notion of conceiving of orchestras or Beethoven or a symphony score as great has become mythologized. However, if one looks contextually at the early 18th century, it’s all part of a continuum. Beethoven happened to be in the right place at the right time. Unlike those who came before him, he was able to choose self-employment rather than a church or a court gig, which allowed him to be compositionally self-determined. Being in Vienna, he had access to a large pool of musicians as well as a sonic formula for how to use them crafted by his predecessors; and critically, he could avail himself of the beginnings of a paying, listening audience.”

This is prevalent in other art forms too. From literature to films to dance, what is defined as great (and by whom) is, now more than ever, being examined with a critical lens. These are difficult, but necessary conversations to have. “We use language in very specific coded ways that we don’t really think about.” Soraya explains, “Equity work is all about surfacing the assumptions within the language that we use. In literature we talk about the canon, and that’s deeply connected to orchestras in terms of the notion of repertoire. What is universal, and who speaks for what is universal…It’s exciting in a way to map out those connections, and to decipher the core assumptions we make in terms of how we see our culture and what language we use to describe this.”

While this is an extensive study into the current state of affairs in Canadian orchestras, it is not intended as a recommendation of best practices or a tool kit for approaching these issues. Soraya says that the study is rather an “acknowledgment that we’re in a cultural moment where there is a vast spectrum of conversations and learnings going on.” The scope of their research is large, notes Parmela, “Canada is an extraordinarily vast geographical space. There are significant differences between Anglophone and Francophone Canada and places where there are different levels of separation or integration between Indigenous people and settlers.” Soraya and Parmela’s presentation at Orchestras Canada’s National Conference is intended to be a continuation of this conversation, with space for feedback and added perspectives from conference participants who were not part of the formal study. They will give a presentation of their research on the morning of May 31st, and will meet that afternoon with smaller groups of delegates to discuss the implications of their observations.

In terms of next steps from this research, Soraya notes that perhaps a change of approach is what is needed the most. “It’s what we hear from every other sector. It’s not about incremental change, it’s about trying to transform the conversation that you’re having at the heart of culture.”

Marketing and the Concert Experience

As part of our 2018 National Conference, California Symphony executive director Aubrey Bergauer spoke to us about her organization’s learnings from Orchestra X, an ongoing exploration of orchestra leadership in a changing world. This plenary session was sponsored by Symmetrica: Creative Technology Solutions.

You can find a recording of this presentation here.

The accompanying slide deck can be found here.

The following interview was originally published on April 19th, 2018 in anticipation of Aubrey’s upcoming sessions at our National Conference

Conference Speaker Spotlight: Aubrey Bergauer

Aubrey Bergauer’s reputation as an organizational leader willing to test, implement, document, and share new ideas and approaches has been growing in the past few years, and Orchestras Canada has been following her work closely since 2016.  We are delighted that she will be joining us at our conference in Calgary, leading a pair of sessions on Friday, June 1 – the second of these sessions is available on our Soundcloud page.

Aubrey began as Executive Director at the California Symphony in 2014, and soon started a project called Orchestra X. This project tracked the responses of a group of culturally active people to their first experience of attending an orchestral concert. The California Symphony team tracked this group’s impressions of the entire concert experience, from their first website visits to conversations had on the way out of the hall. A report on  this project can be found here – but to summarize,  the reasons that culturally active people don’t attend symphony orchestra concerts are varied, and there are aspects of each part of the concert experience that are problematic in attracting and retaining new audiences.

We recently caught up with Aubrey to learn more about the research that she and her organization have been doing.

Where do you see the Orchestra X project going from here?

There are still many things we are currently working on. The biggest is a full website redesign, of which we are in the early stages. We made as many improvements on our current site as we could, and now it’s time to up our game. Because of the Orchestra X research, I was able to include many features we knew we wanted in our new website proposal, such as…

  • Single Ticket pages: The most critical site content, as nearly all our digital marketing directs to these landing pages. They are heavily trafficked and the largest source of information for people seeking concert tickets and those who have already purchased.
  • English/Spanish Language options: Contra Costa County, where we are based, has a 25% Hispanic population; however, our audience does not reflect that. We have several initiatives in development to attract Spanish speaking audiences, but our website does not yet serve this group.
  • Content: Videos, blog posts, playlists, photos – we want to be able to capitalize on the trend of content marketing and be able to present great content front and center. We also want to be able to better tell the stories of our education programs.
  • Event Calendar – we’ve learned prospective patrons look for this and want it to be user friendly and obvious.
  • Better Customer Relationship Management integration for ticketing and donations – Could we do this like Live Nation where it connects to your Facebook account and you can see if your friends have purchased tickets and where they are sitting? It would be awesome if we could have on the homepage, for example, that many of their friends had been to the Symphony before. And then on specific concert listings it would show if any friends were going to that particular event.

Is this something that you are continuing to explore in the way that you communicate with your new and recently acquired audiences?

We are constantly examining all communications channels, from social media to advertising to website copy to the program book. Online, we have made a big push for content marketing, meaning the strategy is to provide interesting educational content over sales messages, and in turn, we’re attracting and engaging more consumers. In the concert hall, we now know that new attendees have very little previously taught understanding of what to expect at an orchestral concert, and we try to make the experience as unintimidating as possible. One way we’ve done that is by advertising in the program book what behavior is ok:

Making Concerts Fun: Bring drinks to your seats. Clap when you like what you hear. Phones on and silent allowed. Listen to the season playlist on SpotifyWe’ve had no problems with glowing screens or people violating union media capture agreements. Generally, folks show up to the concert, take their selfie with the orchestra warming up in the background, then post it to social media to show everyone they know, and put their phone away. Big victory for us. Sometimes during zealous applause/standing ovations, patrons (of all ages!) will film. And then they’re posting a hall full of people going nuts over our orchestra. Love it! Our music director is also great at ‘managing the audience’ with his hands. If he doesn’t want everyone to applaud after a slow movement, for example, he manages that with his gestures and how he ends the preceding movement.

How would you describe the difference in attracting new audiences to orchestral concerts compared to how you convert these people into regular concert-goers?

One of the first things I did at California Symphony was to institute a very disciplined audience retention plan. Despite our industry-wide mantra that we need new audiences, most orchestras are actually excellent at attracting new attendees, and where we collectively struggle is retaining them. The statistic in the U.S. is that 90% of first timers don’t ever come back. So I developed a plan that looks at building audiences through a long term approach with one desired next step for each audience segment, and everything we do points them toward that one next step only. For example, first time attendees receive four different communications inviting them back, as that’s the only thing we want them to do. At the California Symphony, through this approach, our retention rate is now at nearly a third of first time attendees coming back again within 12 months of their first visit, and it’s trending even higher for the current season.

And what about long-term subscribers?

The message those patrons get is how much we love them and their loyal patronage, and we have multiple touchpoints throughout the year to communicate that. And the one next step for them is to donate if they haven’t yet. So the message is a lot about ‘normalizing the behavior.’ In other words, we strategically and intentionally convey how normal it is to donate (as opposed to ‘ticket sales only cover X% of the costs’ type messaging). The caveat to all this is that we treat first year subscribers differently in that this group (where the renewal rate is typically 50% or less in the U.S.) is not solicited for a donation because the one next step for them is to renew their season ticket package.

Lastly, we decided this past year to apply one of our Orchestra X findings to subscribers: in our season brochure, we changed the format of how we write about each concert. Instead of a brief paragraph about each program, we shifted to ‘What’s Interesting About This Concert?’ with a few bullet points modeled after what we now do on our website. The renewal rate jumped to 89% for both new and existing subscribers.

Through all of these tactics, every facet of our audience has grown. Since I joined the organization in 2014, our total annual attendance has nearly doubled and our donor base nearly quadrupled, defying the trends for most orchestras.

What new projects are you working on at the moment?

So many things, it’s such an exciting time! We are constantly running small experiments, such as what makes a better first timer offer to return—a big discount or a cash-off voucher (early results show it might be the latter); or tweaking donation appeal language to see what best brings in the upgrade gifts; or running digital ads in Spanish to see if that alone could move the needle at all in terms of audience demographic composition.

For me, what is most exciting about all the traction and visibility my work at the California Symphony has received, is that this has become my vehicle to do the things I care about most: champion equality and inclusion, invest in professional development and thought leadership for the field, work against the typical siloed organization structures, and contribute in ways that make an impact far beyond my corner of the world. I’m working to change the narrative for classical music, and I can’t wait to see you all in Calgary!

For more information on Aubrey and her research, read her articles on Medium!

What are Donors and Sponsors looking for?

From OC Calgary 2018: At this year’s national conference, delegates had the opportunity to break off into smaller groups to more comprehensively discuss the issues facing them in their orchestras and organizations. This recording presents a panel discussion between four Calgary philanthropists who discuss which organizations they do and do not support and why. Moderated by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra’s Corporate Relations Officer Kajsa Erickson, the panel speakers include Lori Caltagirone (Sunesis Consulting), Jeremy Clark (Clark Hetherington Financial), Sam Hayes (Suncor Energy) and Mary Rozsa de Coquet (Rozsa Foundation).

An audio recording of this resource is available here.

Building a High Performance Culture

In a world where more is expected of orchestras, how might we structure and resource our workplaces so people can engage in this work with abundance and joy?

As part of a workshop at our 2018 National Conference in Calgary, Arts Management expert Jeanne LeSage gave a presentation on the fostering of a high performance culture within an orchestra or arts organization. The slide deck from this workshop is available here.

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Declaration

Attendees at Orchestras Canada’s national conference in 2016 asked OC to work with Canadian orchestras and external experts to frame best practices for Canadian orchestras in shaping their work in Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (aka IDEA).  Over the 2016-17 season, volunteers from the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony worked with OC staff to draft and refine the IDEA Declaration for Canadian Orchestras.  It was approved by the OC board in May 2017, and we now present it to the Canadian orchestral community for discussion and adoption.

An Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility Declaration for Canadian Orchestras (printable pdf version)

An Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility Declaration for Canadian Orchestras (Word version – customize for your orchestra’s unique context and brand as your own)

An audio recording of this session is available here.

From Inclusion to Equity

From OCKitchener2016:

From Inclusion to Equity: A Paradigm for Positioning Diversity as a Catalyst of Artistic and Organizational Enrichment

Workshop lead by Michele Decottignies

The objectives of this workshop were to:

  • “Provide an in-depth overview of an Equity & Diversity Framework that gives us all a shared vocabulary, a shared analysis and a shared process.”
  • “Offer a detailed understanding of the need to attend to individual, social and structural inequities.”
  • “Introduce the three levels of influence and intervention that we have available to us, to bring about changes in our practices, our companies, and the arts ecology as a whole.

VIEW PRESENTATION

Reimagining the Orchestra Subscription Model

From OCKitchener 2016:

Presentation by Namita Desai and John Romeo of Oliver Wyman

From the study:

“Customized subscriptions are prospering because the dynamics of choice have shifted in their favor. Customers today want flexibility, personalization, and relationships with vendors. Because of that, choose-your-own options could become one third of all subscriptions by 2017.”

Namita Desai, author of the study and Consultant, Oliver Wyman

Read the Oliver Wyman study here.

Listen to the audio recording from the conference here.