5 Questions Every Music School Should Ask (and Answer)
Below are five essential questions every music school should be asking. And answering.
1. How is our school training excellent musicians (and what exactly does that mean)?
- Technical/musical ability?
- Musicianship/analytical skills?
- Historical perspective?
- Ensemble contributors?
- Other musical areas of emphasis?
- Multiple musical skill sets?
- Holistic musicians?
2. How is our school developing artists with the potential to succeed professionally?
- Ability to develop vibrant careers (fulfilling, recession-proof, plan B’s, any circumstances)?
- Aware of full array, potential work options?
- Understanding of market circumstances and trends (threats and opportunities, audience expectations, technology)?
- Entrepreneurial mindset?
- Opportunity creators?
- Chance takers?
- Multiple skill sets (musical and nonmusical)
- Product development (differentiated)?
- Marketing (branding, PR, internet/social media, buzz, permission, interviewing)?
- Communication skills?
- Networking skills?
- Collaborative skills?
- Financial literacy (earn income, personal finance, basic accounting, fundraising)?
- Versatility and flexibility?
- Transferable skills?
- Wellness?
- Emotional intelligence?
- Lifelong passion?
3. How is our school directly cultivating new arts audiences?
- Performances heavily attended by variety of demographics?
- Student, faculty, and school-based initiatives?
- Engage non-music aspects of university?
- Add imperative voice to life of city/region?
- Work with local arts organizations?
- Research projects that help solve challenges of local artists/arts organizations?
- Community engagement programs (local businesses, organizations, underserved)?
- Educational initiatives (k-12, family, adult, senior citizen, interest groups)?
- Community leader awareness?
- Advocacy?
- Relevant, engaging, interactive performances?
- Opportunities for non-musicians to create art (rather than just witness)?
4. How is our school contributing positively to the community and world?
- Emphasize need for artist-citizens?
- Cultivate social awareness?
- Solve real problems?
- Fill gaps?
- Make world a better place in some way?
- Outward artists (care about audience and world, not just me, me, me)?
- Leave legacies?
5. How is our school’s culture, curriculum, student body, and faculty different from other music programs?
- Regional/national/international leader?
- Curricular/skills/ideological bias?
- Unusual majors/requirements/ensembles/faculty specialties/electives/resources?
- Unique skills/values that our students possess (i.e. what makes our graduates different than those from other schools)?
- Compare mission statement with other institutions
- Can include “excellence” and “location” in explanation, but not exclusively
- Differentiation, when addressing real needs and marketed effectively, is a powerful recruiting and PR tool
- Substantiate all claims
115 Responses to “5 Questions Every Music School Should Ask (and Answer)”
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DAVID CUTLER balances a varied career as a jazz and classical composer, pianist, educator, arranger, conductor, collaborator, concert producer, author, consultant, speaker and advocate. Dr. Cutler teaches at Duquesne University, where he also serves as Coordinator of Music Entrepreneurship Studies.
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Hear! Hear! So many schools’ mission statements read the same, promoting missions that are nearly identical: build it and they will come. High end vocational training. Music is not the only field needing to confront relevance. See today’s (February 12) article in the NY Times on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new initiatives to become more relevant and appealing to a broader audience.
[...] >5 Questions Every Music School Should Ask (and Answer) Posted by David Cutler on Feb 1st, 2011 in Education | 1 comment [...]
These are terrific, rock-the-boat questions that music schools must address (and continue to update, ask and answer for themselves) to stay both relevant and solvent. These questions promise an education with a keen eye on context. Here’s to education that is meaningful and useful for four years and way beyond!
[...] David Cutler asks the 5 Questions Every Music School Should Ask (and Answer). [...]
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