[SML] OT: Cultural Arts programming at your educational institution

[John Lucs]

Thought I would tap a large audience of people that work in the educational
sector to get some thoughts and input about how you program the arts into
your schools.  We require our 550 (high school) student population to
attend 2 events a year in our theater to open their eyes to live performing
arts.  It has been a bumpy road for the last 3-4 years with what does and
does not go over well.  We limit the performance to about 1-1/2 hrs at the
most with no intermission.  Homework is suspended for the evening. We also
ask the artist(s) to do a master class workshop with our core arts students
during the class period to develop skills and hear their story. We
currently have a group of about 8 within the department looking at
recommendations from other faculty, students, and literature we received.
The budget is about 18-22k a year for it all, performer fee, tech,
catering..etc etc.

Our fustration with the students more recently in the past year or 2 has
been the etiquette use of technology during the show and behavior that has
gone out the window especially if the performance does not appeal to them.

How does you facility go about making your programming choices especially
if it is an all school required event?  We are looking to form a committee
of 10-15 people consisting of performing arts related students and some
faculty outside of our department to help develop a working list of acts
for next year.  We hope that this may bring the masses to enjoy the events
we go with for 2015/16. Would love to hear of your experiences in this
matter.

Reply in a PM to me or share with us all.  Happy New Year everyone.

-- 
--JEL--  <><

John E. Lucs
Technical Director, Theater
Peddie School
jlucs at peddie,.org
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