Music and Students

It will not likely come as news to anyone, but college students are reluctant to attend classical music events (reluctant being an understatement). Without a plot, or even much in the way of visuals, Classical music seems a relic of another time. Even if they like classical music, most students aren't interested in "watching" music being played.

Perhaps YouTube has solved this problem by having classical music played by the muppets:








Ok, so not EXACTLY, but surely we can find ways like this to make music interesting in a visual world.

What is Arts Administration

I'm taking the Program in Arts Administration (what we call a Minor) to the Educational Policy Committee on Monday for approval. I've been thinking about how I will explain what Arts Administration is. I think, at its heart, Arts Administration is understanding the importance or relevance of Art, and then explaining that importance to various audiences. You can explain the value of art as entertainment or intellectual stimulation (we call this marketing), you can explain art's value to a community (fundraising, public art), or you can explain the economic value of art (financial analysis, budget reporting).

One of the challenges to this conceptualization of arts administration in an educational setting is that it sort of requires that there be ways for students to learn about the cultural history and a way for them to learn cultural analysis - a rarity in a small liberal-art curriculum like Albright's. Are there ways to teach cultural analysis as part of an arts administration curriculum (as opposed to "in conjunction with an arts administration curriculum?)

Whither Students?

One of the challenges of doing publicity for a student arts center is how to balance our desire to be as "professional" as possible with the reality that most of our audience members are students. So our faculty and performance students want (or at least expect) us to do things like print posters and programs, have advertising in the local paper etc. But, if we were really to target the student audience I'd do more marketing via facebook and other student-centric media. Also, the productions themselves try to feel like "real" theatre - the lights go down, audience members are asked to silence all cell-phones etc. However, if we were really programing for students, why wouldn't we encourage texting during the performance? On the one hand, it's good to train future audience members how to behave, but on the other, shouldn't the arts be adapting to their audiences rather than trying to get their audiences to adapt to them?