Project Grant - Round 1
ACHF Arts Access ACHF Arts Education
Our objective is to increase our audience and expand it as well with a concert geared specifically to children and families. Our goal is to increase both the artistic quality and technical ability of the choirs involved. We want to have our concert result in members of our audience--young and old--participating in choral or other musical performance groups in their schools and/or communities because of their exposure to a high quality choral concert that will also be a lot of fun. Singing in a choir is listed as one of the healthiest lifetime habits a person can have, and our goal is to encourage participation.We have accurate attendance records from last year's concert, including age category, and we will do the same this year in order to be able to evaluate audience growth. We have labeled each ticket with the category and then collected tickets at the door to accomplish this. We will ask the audience to fill out a short evaluation form asking where they heard about the concert, if it is the first time they've attended, and what aspects they enjoyed about the concert programming. This will be a good tool for future planning of events as well as evaluating marketing effectiveness. We will have a slightly different survey for the participating artists which will also help us plan next year's event and to see what areas of the concert were most appreciated by the students and what they came away with following the event. This will help us build more educational opportunities into this already successful artistic collaboration. As well as written feedback in the survey, we will interview each of the participating directors concerning the effectiveness of the collaboration for the growth of their choirs. We will listen to the verbal comments of participants and audience members about the enjoyment of and learning that occurred as a result of the performances. All of the above measures will be combined into a concert success summary that will be discussed with the artistic director and the board of directors as part of the planning for our next collaborative event. We will ask the artistic directors of each guest ensemble for feedback about the educational merit, technical challenge and growth resulting from the concert preparation, and musical growth from the variety of styles and traditions of the songs in the concert.
Our two main objectives were to increase and expand our audience with a concert geared specifically to children and families, and to increase both the artistic quality and technical ability of the choirs involved. To this end, we were successful for a combination of reasons. We offered slightly different pricing lowering the ticket prices for seniors, and offering family pricing of $40 total for households that included two adults and more than two children. We believe that this pricing, along with broader marketing efforts, contributed to the high number of student and senior tickets sold. We were extremely satisfied with our attendee total of 693 (just seven bodies shy of our goal for this performance) considering a Messiah Sing at the Paramount was scheduled for the same time and there were less than ideal weather conditions on the evening of December 15th. Several audience members commented that the family pricing was the reason they were able to afford to come to the concert at all. Advertising included sponsorship on public radio, heavy ad spot placement on WJON AM radio, light placement on Spirit 92.9 (two stations we never advertised on before), and articles and information in the Saint Cloud Times and local newspapers. Out of 693 tickets sold, 311 were adults, 219 were seniors, and 116 were students or children. 44 of the tickets were sold at a family rate. We know that several families of Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota and Cantabile members took advantage of family pricing, commenting that this was the reason they were able to afford to come to the concert at all. We asked audience members to fill out surveys to help us understand and serve our community better and received some great feedback. Several people commented on the success of the collaboration and that it was beautiful to experience the three different groups. A breakdown of Survey results is attached in the supporting materials. Of course, we wish more people would participate in the survey (response rate was 7%), and are considering incentives for next year’s concert because we feel it is the best way to gauge our audience. Performers from Great River Chorale, Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota, and Cantabile were asked to provide feedback about the artistic merit of participating in the concert through an electronic response form. The majority of the responses relayed a similar answer that indeed, working with various directors, singing with and hearing the different groups helped them to grow as musicians. Several performers commented that the parts they enjoyed best were the collaborative pieces. Participating directors were also asked to provide feedback about the artistic merit and effectiveness of the collaboration in order to help us build more educational opportunities into this already successful artistic collaboration. They enjoyed the experience of collaborating with ensembles to produce a well-thought out concert. A continuing goal for Great River Chorale is to promote choral singing, and we believe this was achieved with audience participation in and exposure to our exceptional choral holiday concert.
Other, local or private