After months of it sitting in my inbox, I finally got around to sampling the plenary sessions from the League of American Orchestras’ summer conference. I found myself riveted by the Luncheon Plenary Speech by Alex Laing.
He was mentioning how his performance would be better if he could look out into the audience and see black folks sharing in the experience. We in the arts are challenging ourselves to bring more diversity into our world, but maybe we are going about the wrong way.
Alex Laing has the ideas for the right way, and the core of these ideas is my passion, audience development.
Around minute 25 in this shorter speech, Alex tells us how he brought diversity to his next performance. He started by realizing that instead of inviting people to Mozart because we think it would be good for them, instead invite them because “I need you in my Mozart.” He tapped into all his networks, including his wife’s beauty salon network (and don’t underestimate the power of these types of networks). And, they responded by showing up to support him.
Also, he touches upon his concept of the Open Kitchen Orchestra. This would be a way for us to tell new stories and the meaning of music to the people of today. Currently, what he terms The Orchestra Machine, the narrative of this machine is at odds for diversity due to its status quo formulaic norms.
Please enjoy this speech from the moment I perked up to recognize Alex was on to something, and I also recognized once again, for our best interests, it would be good to believe in the power of audience development.
Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana
Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, Audience Development Specialists
