Community Collaboration - Jim Gill’s Family Room Concert

Award-winning children's musician, author and early childhood educator Jim Gill presented two interactive and lively concerts for children and their families in the Rochester Public Library Auditorium. The target audience for this program was families with children ages birth to five years old. Families with young children in our community need access to quality arts experiences as well as programs that reinforce the early literacy practices. Jim Gill’s Family Room Concerts enabled exposure to caregivers to four of the five early literacy practices: singing, reading, playing and talking. RPL realizes that children learn in a variety of methods and anticipate that the concert experience will encourage caregivers to use these practices to get the young children in their care ready to learn to read. Early literacy handouts were provided to caregivers at the conclusion of the concerts. These concerts were designed to complement RPL’s efforts in early literacy. Early literacy is identified as a service priority in the library’s 2011-2036 Strategic Plan. With the full support of library administration, Children’s Services is working to bring early literacy to the forefront of their services. These concerts also provided many young children with their first live concert experience and will be a test market for RCM. Parents and children have not been a traditional target audience for RCM, so this partnership will be a pilot project to test interest in serious art programs for young children. This project will nurture a cultural exchange network where the library shares facility services and taps the resources of a major cultural institution to support quality programming. Promotional materials were be produced and distributed to library customers at checkout and information desks. Posters promoting the concerts were hung in the library and other local outlets. Event-specific press releases and public service announcements was circulated to nearly 100 Southeastern Minnesota media outlets. Display advertising was purchased in the Post-Bulletin. The project was marketed on RCM & RPL’s webpages and social media outlets. RCM will create an hour long promotional piece to run on Cable Channel 19 twice a day, providing parents with samples of Jim Gill’s music and performances. A post card mailing was sent to an extensive mailing list through RCM. One goal was to open up the audience to people who may normally not use the library and have exposure to early literacy experiences. From January until the concerts in May, RPL Children’s Services staff used the recorded music of Jim Gill during weekly baby, toddler, preschool, family and outreach storytimes to expose as many children and caregivers to the music as possible. It also provided caregivers with a multitude of opportunities to practice early literacy skills with the children in their care.