Concert childcare at the museum
The Owensboro Symphony Orchestra’s performance space is Cannon Hall, located in the downtown district of Owensboro, Kentucky and within walking distance of the Owensboro Area Museum of Science and History. Kathy Olson, clarinetist and bass clarinetist with the orchestra and director of the Owensboro Museum, initiated discussion with OSO board members along with her husband Gregory Olson, principal bassist of the orchestra. They hoped to create a live feed from the orchestra concert to a room where their young son could hear his parents performing. Though the idea was conceived in the early 1980s, the concept never had an opportunity for growth until the Owensboro Museum recently moved to its current location, just a block away from Cannon Hall. Kathy now brings younger audiences to the OSO by giving young parents the opportunity to enjoy performances without the responsibility of finding childcare. In the search for convenient, safe, and fun childcare, she developed Concert Curators in conjunction with the Owensboro Museum.
One of the Museum’s largest visitor demographics is children, so the building houses classrooms catering to children and child-friendly exhibits and galleries. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Olson invited parents to drop their children off at the museum prior to the orchestra concert. Childcare starts at 7:00 p.m., half an hour before the concert begins, and ends at 10:00 p.m., approximately half an hour after the conclusion. Any child from ages three to ten is welcome. OSO Education Director Dr. Diane Earle, who is also a department head at Kentucky Wesleyan College, has enlisted education majors at the college to volunteer on Saturdays to take charge of the children. Rather than watching TV at home with a babysitter, the children have many activities available to them. Depending on the evening, the kids may visit the museum’s exhibits with hands-on experiences, play musical games, make musical crafts, listen to stories, or produce plays with the museum’s puppets. The Owensboro Museum has limited the evening to 20 children, and requires that parents register by Wednesday prior to the Saturday concert. Because Concert Curators was developed in conjunction with the OSO, symphony subscribers or museum members pay $8 per child for the evening, while all others pay $10.
With the right people in the right place, there was little difficulty connecting all three elements—the OSO, the Owensboro Museum, and Kentucky Wesleyan College—due to everyone’s involvement with the orchestra. With the opening night bringing in eight children, organizers are excited for future growth. Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf finished out the evening, ending just as parents arrived to pick up their children. The timing gave a rousing ending to the evening for both children and parents. If possible, Concert Curators plans events to correspond with the orchestra’s programming, though the children’s enjoyment is more important than similar programming between OSO and Concert Curators. The second program is planned to pair the OSO’s All-American program with child-friendly works by Gershwin and Ives. In January, the OSO is performing Mendelssohn, which will be paralleled by a Concert Curator experience featuring works by the same composer, and a spotlight on Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals in front of the museum’s fully-articulated Columbian Mammoth. Olson still hopes to introduce some method of live feed from concert to museum, or pursue other possibilities including a take-home CD of music for the children. After all, the children’s interest in the evening is just as important as their parents’, and with Concert Curators allowing all to enjoy themselves equally, the opportunity for repeat visits is high.
For further info:
Reneé Beasley Jones, Director of Sales and Marketing,
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http://www.owensboromuseum.com/programs/concert.php
http://owensboroamericanorchestras.org