On Saturday, April 10, the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony’s Design a Concert program has its 2nd annual outing.  The program, inspired by a similar program offered by the Pittsburgh Symphony, offers 30 high school students (from 6 different schools) the opportunity to work with staff on the theme, program, marketing, fundraising and stage production elements of an orchestral concert.

We’ll let the KW Symphony’s Director of Education, Christopher Sharpe, take it from here:

“The students need to take time away from school for the 6 working sessions, each lasting 1.5 hours, so it is not always easy finding students to volunteer their time for this.

The students select a specific workgroup: Marketing, Artistic, Development and Operations (Production), and each workgroup is mentored by at least one KWS staff member at all times. We provide the students with the venue, the orchestra, a conductor and soloist(s). The rest is designed and run by them, starting with determining the theme which leads to the programming, which then determines the marketing, fund raising and stage production elements of the project.

The students work on a deal sheet with KWS staff which determines budgets and ticket prices. The golden rule is that the bottom line does not show a deficit so the students quickly learn how simple decisions can have a major impact on the budget.

The staff have been challenged and inspired by this project. Teaching is not always a role that they were prepared for, but they have all enjoyed working with the students. They have many stories about the students who get ‘bitten by the bug’ and will likely use this work experience as part of their future careers.

This season’s concert takes place this Saturday, April 10. The students wanted to be part of the performance so they will sing O Canada with the orchestra at the end of it. If last year is any indication, the concert will be as professionally run as any KWS concert, but the audience will be made aware of the hard work the students put into it. The musicians appreciate how this program benefits the students taking part and understand how it helps guide some of them into arts management. If nothing else, the students who participate gain a huge appreciation for all that it takes to put on a concert, and many of them will be our future audience members.”

For more information about the KW Symphony, you can visit their website here.