Project Grant - Round 1
ACHF Arts Access ACHF Arts Education
1. Minnesota Center Chorale performs at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, providing a high quality performance rooted in themes of spirituality, nature, and friendship. 2. Minnesota Center Chorale’s collaboration with Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota’s Mixed Choir and Women's Ensemble and guest organist Kraig Windschitl enhances the concert for patrons and Minnesota Center Chorale members. 3. Reach and attract a 15% larger audience than Minnesota Center Chorale’s fall 2011 concert at Saint Mary’s Cathedral. 4. Patrons provide positive feedback on the performance, song selection, collaboration, and representation of the theme, and offer suggestions for improvement. 5. Patrons gain understanding of the meaning behind the works performed and how they fit the theme of the concert. 6. Provide exposure for a senior composition student to 165 singers and an audience of over 240 patrons.1. Provide a high quality performance rooted in spirituality, nature, and friendship. After the concert, staff and board members receive comments both verbally and via questionnaires about the quality of the performance and guest performers from patrons. Minnesota Center Chorale’s director discusses the concert with guest artists to gauge their response to the performance. Minnesota Center Chorale’s director assesses the concert with choir members at the next scheduled rehearsal. A video recording will allow the director and staff to assess the effectiveness of the singers in portraying emotion to deliver the musical themes of nature, friendship and spirituality. 2. Minnesota Center Chorale’s collaborative efforts continue to enhance the experiences of both patrons and Minnesota Center Chorale members. During the post-concert reception, patrons often speak with guest artists and provide feedback. Minnesota Center Chorale board members and singers discuss guest performances with patrons during the concert reception. At the next scheduled rehearsal, Minnesota Center Chorale’s director discusses guest artist experiences with choir members. At the next board meeting, Minnesota Center Chorale director discusses comments with board members and as a group they discover what portions of the project were successful and which portions should be altered for future success. 3. Reach and attract a 15% larger audience base through collaboration with the Youth Chorale. The survey will ask patrons how they heard about the concert. This will allow Minnesota Center Chorale to gauge which advertising efforts are most successful and which ones need improvement. The questionnaire will also ask patrons how many times they have seen Minnesota Center Chorale and the Youth Chorale, which will provide information about exposure for the choirs involved. Ticket information will inform what percent of the audience was adult, senior, student, and youth. The audience breakdown will be used to understand the effects of collaboration with a choir made up of young singers on attracting new audience members. 4. Patrons provide feedback verbally and in their questionnaire. Comments made by patrons to performers will be passed on to Minnesota Center Chorale’s director at the next rehearsal. The director will then bring those comments before the board at the next board meeting. Surveys will be collected and evaluated to determine patron feedback. 5. Patrons will gain knowledge through program notes about the background and history of the spiritual and nature-alluding text from “Rejoice in the Lamb,” and its author, Christopher Smart. Patrons will also understand through program notes how the text from the other works performed relays a sense of friendship, and how Flannery Cunningham’s text was inspired by the early settlers of St Cloud, Minnesota. 6. Provide exposure for a senior composition student to 165 singers and an audience of over 240 patrons. The directors of Minnesota Center Chorale and Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota will assess the post-concert reactions and opinions.
Outcomes in Proposal 1) Minnesota Center Chorale performs at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, providing a high quality performance rooted in themes of spirituality, nature, and friendship. 2) Minnesota Center Chorale’s collaboration with Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota and guest organist Kraig Windschitl enhances the concert for patrons and Minnesota Center Chorale members. 3) Reach a 15% larger audience than Minnesota Center Chorale’s fall 2011 concert. 4) Patrons provide positive feedback on the performance, song selection, collaboration, and representation of the theme, and offer suggestions for improvement. 5) Patrons gain understanding of the meaning behind the works performed and how they fit the theme of the concert. 6) Provide exposure for a senior composition student to 165 singers and an audience of over 240 patrons. Evaluation Methods 1) Conversations between board members, performers, and patrons allow for assessment of quality and effective theme representation. 2) During the reception Minnesota Center Chorale members and Ms. Martinson assess patron response through conversations. 3) The number of attendees is calculated and compared to Minnesota Center Chorale’s concert at Saint Mary’s Cathedral in fall 2011. 4) A survey is sent to concert patrons. 5) Program notes and song introductions provide patrons with information on works performed. 6) The Operations Coordinator collects the number of audience and artists participating. Outcomes Achieved 1 and 2) Patrons provided positive feedback to Minnesota Center Chorale members and Ms. Martinson during the post-concert reception. Many enthusiastic responses from audience members were shared with the board at the November 2012 board meeting. 3) The total audience attending was calculated at 383 members. The total audience attending was much larger than the audience of Minnesota Center Chorale’s Fall 2011 concert at Saint Mary’s of 132. 4) Survey responses showed many attendees appreciation of the collaboration between the youthful and mature voices. When asked what was liked about the concert, comments included “The setting was nice and the inter-generational choirs performing along and together”; “All the different ages were Awesome to hear together ;) [sic]”; “I liked the inclusion of the younger choirs. The chance for our local young singers to get the chance to participate with veteran singers is invaluable [sic].” Some surveyed offered constructive criticism: “Actually would like to listen to a couple more combined choir pieces…”; “The repertoire could have complimented each other more”; “…would like to see fewer of them [religious selections] and more secular songs…” 5) During the post-concert reception, one patron told Ms. Martinson she found the inclusion of the text and background information about Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” very helpful in understanding why Britten set the music in particular ways to match the meaning of the text. 6) Flannery Cunningham’s commissioned work reached 200 singers and 383 audience members, well over the proposed numbers.
Other, local or private