2015-2016 OU T R EAC H
WHERE THE MONEY GOES Anyone who’s received an appeal letter from an arts organization has read some variation on the following: “Ticket Sales cover only 50% of artist fees…” For some organizations it might actually be 52 percent; for others, 48—but whatever the precise amount, the fact of the matter is this: the arts are expensive—especially if you are trying to keep your ticket prices affordable and performances accessible. And if you also insist on offering more free activities than ticketed events—for example, 82 in-school residencies, student matinees, free community concerts, master classes, artist Q&As, panels, lectures and more versus 39 ticketed performances in the 2015-16 season—it becomes financially impossible. Unless you have generous donors who support your vision, your mission, and your efforts to bring the arts and arts education to as broad a swath of the community as possible. In the spirit of one picture being worth a thousand words, we’d like to share just some of the free outreach events your gifts made possible this year.
MASTER CLASSES
Trisha Brown Master Class with UW Dance Program students
Master Class with Jonathan Biss
Sō Percussion performs “Drumming” with School of Music percussion students after a weeklong residency
Master Class with Yulianna Avdeeva
Martha Graham Dance Company Master Class
Master Class with Igor Levit
Robert Mirabal visits an ethnomusicology class
K-12 ARTS EDUCATION Every year we bring thousands of students from across the region to attend free matinee performances by our visiting artists. For many of these children, a trip to Meany Hall is their first experience of live performance. We serve hundreds more students in their classrooms, bringing artists into schools for residencies that can last anywhere from a day to a week. Depending on the length of the residency, it costs us between several hundred and several thousand dollars beyond the fee we pay artists to perform on our series.
A thousand 3rd-12th graders wait for Martha Graham Dance Company to begin their matinee performance
After a hopping student matinee, one lucky classroom stays behind to jam with SĹ? Percussion
Daedalus Quartet gave five concerts in one day for grades K-5 at Lowell Elementary School
American roots singer Martha Redbone came to Seattle for a week of in-school residencies at several local schools
A Martha Redbone residency at Licton Springs K-8
Martha Redbone at Sand Point Elementary School
Martha Redbone at Marysville High School
COMMUNITY PERFORMANCES As often as we can, we try to take artists out from under the proscenium arch and into the community to give free performances, lectures and demonstrations. Venues where free events happen have included the Seattle Art Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the Seattle Asian Art Museum, Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, the UW Intellectual House, Henry Art Gallery, UW undergraduate library, dorms, dining halls—and the exterior walls of Meany Hall, to name just a few.
Robert Mirabal and Ethel give a free public concert at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ, a.k.a. UW Intellectual House
Martha Redbone gives a free public concert at the UW Intellectual House
Passers-by near Meany Hall in February were instructed to look up...
...and up...
To see a performance of Trisha Brown’s Man Walking Down the Side of a Building on Meany’s exterior wall
Trisha Brown’s Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (Rachael Lincoln performing)
Staff and students at the Allen Library weren’t expecting Sō Percussion’s pop-up performance of Reich’s Clapping
Several hundred visitors at SAM were treated to a free performance of Trisha Brown Dance Company’s In Plain Site
Daedalus Quartet provided students at Odegaard Undergraduate Library with a soundtrack for their studies
Meany Center is deeply grateful to the corporations, foundations, government agencies and the hundreds of individual donors whose generous support each year make these programs possible.