Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we're devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, August 14th, and I'm Joan Katz Napoli, Senior Vice President of Education and Community Programs for the Cleveland Orchestra.

I'm pleased to welcome today's forum, which is the Lisa Botnick Karen Faith Witt and A.H.

Weinstein Memorial Forum, and it's part of the City Club's Education Innovation Series.

The future begins with our youth.

We say this often and loudly, but what does it really mean to truly invest in the future of Cleveland's creative arts economy?

And how can we ensure equitable access to music education?

For decades, studies have shown that high-quality music instruction leads to a variety of benefits for young people: greater confidence, self-discipline, perseverance, creativity, critical thinking, leadership skills, and a sense of belonging, to name just a few.

Don't all children deserve these benefits?

Here in Cleveland, we're proud to be home to several leading arts and cultural institutions that are removing barriers and increasing access to music education.

The Cleveland Orchestra, for example, provides free tickets and bus transportation, 2 major barriers, to all Northeast Ohio students for its NORAD Education Concerts at Severance Hall, serving thousands each year.

And the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, celebrating 40 years this season, provides advanced high school music students with a unique pre-professional orchestral training experience.

But before any students perform on stage, their musical journeys begin in the same way ours did, alongside dedicated music instructors band teachers, volunteers, and tutors.

I'd like to take a moment to recognize any music and arts educators here in the audience today or tuning in via livestream or radio broadcast.

So if you're here with us, please stand up to be recognized, and let's have a round of applause for our educators.

Today, we're privileged to hear from the leadership of 3 outstanding local institutions that are prioritizing the musical journeys of young people.

The Music Settlement and the Rainey Institute were both founded over 100 years ago to provide arts and culture education and support to Cleveland's immigrant and wage-earning populations.

They have since grown into community anchors serving thousands of youth.

The Contemporary Youth Orchestra, founded in 1995, gives young musicians the opportunity to perform contemporary music, collaborate with living composers and artists, and explore real-life career opportunities in the music industry.

Joining us on stage to discuss how we can empower the next generation of artists and continue strengthening Cleveland's cultural economy are Marcella Brown, Executive Director of the Rainey Institute, Gerry Presti, President and CEO of the Music Settlement, and Shayne Smith, Executive Director of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra.

Moderating today's conversation is Jejuana Brown, Senior Director of Inclusion and Community Relations at the Cleveland Orchestra.

If you have a question for our speakers, you can text it to 330-541-5794.

Again, that's 330-541-5794.

541-5794, and City Club staff will try to work those questions into the second half of our program.

Members and friends of the City Club in Cleveland, please join me in welcoming today's speakers.

Thank you, Joan, and we are so looking forward to today's conversation.

We're going to jump right in.

And my opening question for the panel is, what role did music education play in your own life and how has that experience shaped the work you do today?

Absolutely.

Well, good morning and thank you, Jejuana.

Thank you to the City Club of Cleveland for having us today and for facilitating this important conversation.

I would just start by saying my musical journey began in the church.

Which is where I would assume for those involved in music, particularly from the Black community, many of our journeys begin at church.

I was a member of Greater Love Missionary Baptist Church on 116th and Union right here in Cleveland.

And my pastor, Bishop Eugene Ward, and his wife at the time, Beverly Johnson, saw something in me that allowed me to join the church choir and be involved in praise dancing and doing a variety of other things.

That nurtured confidence and a strong faith foundation.

It also allowed me to tour and go to other churches where our youth choir was able to perform.

And so that was an opportunity for me to build community, for music to help shape my foundation, my personality, and just my ability to feel confident in front of crowds and, and engage and, and make friends and do all the things that I think early exposure to music allows for young people, particularly women, because if you haven't paid attention, it's, it's not that easy being a teenage girl in America.

So, so that's really where my foundation began.

Wonderful, thank you.

Gerri?

Sure, good afternoon everyone.

I fell in love with the piano at age 6 and I began lessons at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Later on, I learned about a new field, music therapy.

And after college, I went to the Cleveland Music School Settlement to practice music therapy for about 5 years.

This is an intervention using music as a medium, an intervention to heal people with life challenges.

After 27 years of practicing law at a wonderful organization, I found that I'm still a music therapist at heart.

And what I saw about music therapy, it showed me how music is so transformative and so healing to so many people.

And so I've returned to this role to continue that transformative work.

Thank you.

Well, thank you all so much for being here, and I am humbled and honored to be sharing the stage with these incredible 3 women here.

My music path also started in the church.

My grandma was a church organist, and she was 4'9.

So I was the person pressing the bass.

And that's where I, that's where I learned to read music.

So very and I, I'm not much taller, so it worked out.

But, but I learned music through the church and through my grandmother.

Music was always in the house.

So it was a natural pathway for me to go into music education.

There was kind of never a question of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

So then I went into public education.

I taught on the Navajo Reservation for 10 years out in Arizona, and that's where I learned that teaching is way more than just lecturing in a classroom.

You are a lot of different things.

You wear the hat of a parent, the hat of a caretaker.

Sometimes you're the holder of the Band-Aids.

You're the person that is helping the child not only get through their music education, but to get through their teenage years and get through, you know, a very impactful part of their life.

So thank you, Shayne.

I'm going to stay with you and I'm going to ask you, how do you help students understand the much broader range of careers available in today's musical ecosystem?

Yeah, well, that is a big part of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra's mission, is focusing on pathways beyond just what is commonly showcased to students as performance or education.

When I was in high school, that was kind of the 2 pathways to take.

It was either you were going into a performance group or you were going to be a teacher.

When in reality, especially here in Cleveland, there is a huge ecosystem of music careers.

There's a music industry that spans beyond the idea of education but spans into sound engineering, venue management.

It goes into, you know, a performer themselves in an indie group, music production.

So that's what we really like to do at the Contemporary Youth Orchestra is to ensure that students are exposed to careers like that.

We do that by booking a variety of venues throughout Cleveland, ensuring that we're connected with the tech part of it.

We've had people behind the audio board.

We've had students behind the audio board you know, seeing exactly what that sound engineer is doing.

We've also— we're hosting a music professionals panel.

That panel is featuring people from Live Nation, performers, sound engineers, as well as arts administrators like ourselves.

And it's showing that students have a pathway beyond just education or performance.

Are you noticing any trends in terms of what students are more interested in now?

Students are really interested in electronic music.

That is something that is incredibly an evolving field very, very quickly.

And it's been around for a while, but I think kids have more access to it now because they're more comfortable around a computer.

And I know that tech is something that, you know, is debatable as like, where is the line of that?

But students are really finding themselves in classrooms where they're assistive devices.

They're not creative devices.

Well, then I'm going to go to my question here.

As music educator— as music education leaders, how are you responding to artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies?

Where do you see opportunities to expand creativity and access?

And where do leaders such as yourselves need to protect the fundamental the fundamentally human and communal aspects of making music.

I would just— oh, sorry.

I would maybe just interject that because of the demographic of students that we serve at the Rainey Institute, our focus is grades K through 8.

And so we recognize that without providing a strong base knowledge of the history of music and bringing it forward into contemporary music, our students are going to struggle to understand that what they see and experience right now today started somewhere.

So we're cautious in the way we integrate advanced technology at the Rainey Institute.

But we, we do want to keep the kids engaged and excited about the way music and the industry is evolving.

So we do that in small bursts of opportunities for them.

We may have a class in which students are learning about the music industry as far as musical production.

This summer at one of our summer camps, the students were able to make soundtracks, kind of coming out music.

So for anyone here that watches like wrestling or things like that, the music that an athlete comes out to, we taught the students that that is something that is produced and it's uniquely a reflection of that particular athlete and their brand.

And so helping the students understand the context of music brands and contemporary uses of music can come together well.

So we're cautious about the way we're integrating advanced technology, but it's more a reflection of the demographic and the age that we serve at Rainey.

I love that idea of a soundtrack.

I think we should have had some music.

You know, we should have had some theme music, you know, music education.

I think it would have been very appropriate.

I was very impressed they made a soundtrack for me as well this summer.

You're going to have to share it with us.

Oh, wow.

I was very humbled and excited.

By that.

Love it.

Gerri?

Yes, I will say, well, we at the Music Settlement haven't really embraced AI yet.

We kind of do it the old-fashioned way where we have real humans making music, playing and singing and coming up with beautiful music of expression and feelings.

But the advancements in music technology in the music industry are really, really important right now, and we've got to be able to innovate.

And get with the program.

So what we're doing at the Music Settlement, and I'm really, really excited, our capital project that we're constructing right now, the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Music House, will open in the fall of 2027.

And we plan to build a technology lab.

It'll have 8 digital stations, and we're going to teach the music, the business of music, because we need to provide pathways from music to the workforce.

And the way that we're going to do that is teach the things that these— my colleagues have referenced: beat writing, film scoring, composition, music production, and the entrepreneurship skills that go with it.

I am hoping for a pipeline to Tri-C Community College.

My colleagues are here this afternoon so that they can go into the creative arts program at Tri-C and then be able to go into the workforce and earn a living.

There are many skills that we are— we teach our music students and they develop that are very important to employers: discipline, focus, confidence, all of those type of skills that are vital.

And we're really excited about this project.

Thank you.

Shayne.

So as far as generative AI, we are— we are definitely aware of the line of where that becomes a an assistive device and a creation device, because a lot of AI can be used for accessibility and ensuring that students that, you know, have any sort of disability or need assistance can, you know, benefit from that.

As far as creation, we do not encourage any of our students to use it.

Excuse me, use any of those devices or use any of those platforms.

We did— we have a program called CYBWrite, and CYBWrite is our student composition program.

And this program is in collaboration with the Cleveland Composers Guild, and each student is matched with a composer from the Cleveland Composers Guild, and they together work on a piece and present it in the spring, which is really a fantastic program.

We have a lot of kids really involved in it.

And we saw a little bit of it happening this year, and we had to correct some things.

We had to pull back and say, the purpose of this practice, the purpose of this exercise is the expression and the creation here.

And this is making it too inhuman.

This is pulling away from kind of the purpose of that practice, because music is a practice to build a human.

We are building young humans, we are fostering lots of skills in young humans, and they're not going to get that if they're relying too much on AI.

I love that.

I find it very interesting and curious that you all, you're approaching it cautiously and really trying to make sure that you are strengthening a foundation for the students before they go into generative AI.

Marcella, How do you use the El Sistema framework, and please share more about it, and the tradition of the orchestra, using that tradition as a vehicle for empowerment while also making sure students see their own musical cultures and identities reflected in what they're learning?

So the Rainey Institute's pedagogy within our music program is the El Sistema model.

Of teaching music.

It was created in the mid-'70s in Venezuela.

And at the time, Venezuela was going through a pretty volatile, violent period in the history of their government and civic affairs.

And the goal of creating it was really to create a space where young people in the community could primarily be safe, be kept safe from the violence that was going on in the streets of Venezuela.

But also to provide them with a tool to continue to develop, to have a space where they could get to know themselves and to leverage music as a tool for personal development.

And so you had people volunteering from the community, you had members of the community literally creating instruments from like things that they were finding in junkyards and in various other spaces because their resources were so limited.

That they really started from nothing and created an entire system and structure of musical education based upon small group instruction, honoring the dignity of students who they knew had very few resources, who were seeing violence every day outside of their doors, and who needed something to keep their attention, to keep their focus, and to give them hope.

You know, because at the end of the day, that was a big part of why the El Sistema program was created.

Was to instill hope into the hearts and minds of young people who were seeing an extreme amount of violence outside their doors every day.

And so this was adopted by the Rainey Institute because fast forward, we were founded in 1904 during the settlement house movement here in Cleveland at a time when we were facing some pretty significant challenges as a city as well.

And so that, that model of, you know, leveraging the arts as a whole, because the Rainey Institute also does music, dance, drama, visual art, and culinary.

And so we leverage the arts to keep the hearts and minds of young people in Cleveland to this day.

And we've just found that the El Sistema model works because it honors the dignity of students who we know are coming to us having never played, having never held an instrument.

They don't know how to read music.

We are their first point of contact with formal music education.

And so it takes a certain level of patience, It takes teachers who, again, are committed to honoring the dignity of students who they know don't know the musical notes.

They have to learn it, you know, don't know how to hold the bow when they're playing the cello.

They have to learn that.

But it's amazing to see the growth over a season.

A student who comes to us, they've never had a cello, they've never read music.

And over the course of a season, they come to be able to read music, to be able to play in small groups, in smaller ensembles within our orchestra program of El Sistema and perform for families and parents.

And so it's a, it's a model that I think works for Rainey because we are working with very low-income populations.

We're located in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland and also in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood on the west side.

And so we recognize that we are dealing with students who have very limited resources and families who want to see their children do well.

But they just don't have the means to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars every year to pay for formal arts education.

And so the model works very well for us.

Have you noticed any differences in the needs across the Cuyahoga?

You know, we're not— we're not scared to cross the Cuyahoga at Rainey because we're in both, you know, both neighborhoods.

You know, I would say we do kind of tailor, and this is something that our music program, really the entire organization, has had to embrace with intention, is the differences in the communities.

The Hough neighborhood is primarily an African American and Chinese area of Cleveland, whereas Clark-Fulton is a mix of African American, Caucasian, and primarily Hispanic.

And so we adjust the, just kind of the integration of the types of music or subdisciplines within to reflect the neighborhood.

So it could be small things.

But again, our goal is that commitment to honoring the dignity, but also elevating the culture and the heritage of the neighborhoods where we're located in.So it could be small differences.

Perhaps on the East Side, we're focusing on things that are more a reflection of the culture in the neighborhoods that we're in.

But our goal is to present things that excite the students.

You know, because of course they do need to learn the fundamentals of music, but we're committed to doing it in a way that keeps their interest.

Thank you.

You know, this brings me to a question around access.

And so I'm going to ask Gerri to start and invite anyone else to respond.

From each of your perspectives, what does meaningful access look like today and what barriers are you still seeing that prevent young people from participating and thriving in music education.

So access is really a threshold issue to participation in all of the arts, and while talent is abundant, opportunity is not.

And some— among the barriers that we find at the Music Settlement are age, abilities and skills, socioeconomic backgrounds.

And the way that the Music Settlement's 114-year-old mission is to welcome all, all ages, all backgrounds, all abilities to our music and arts community to learn, create, celebrate, and heal.

And the way that we are able to break down the barriers is through generous financial aid.

Last year we were able to give $580,000 of financial aid and merit scholarships to our students.

Another way that we do it is we offer free, free music programming.

So we are fortunate to be receiving a grant from the Gund Foundation where we're offering free programs up at the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Commuting Authority behind our Ohio City campus.

We've been able to offer free instruments to children that don't have enough money to afford instruments.

And my colleagues here on stage, other music and arts organizations, were part of a group led by Councilman Kevin Conwell, and we were able to provide free instruments to CMSD students.

So these are many of the ways that we are able to reduce those barriers.

But also the important thing is that the Music Settlement is— we offer a diversity of programming and genres.

So we offer private individual music instruction, 65 faculty over almost every single instrument.

And then we offer a variety of genres.

We offer jazz and rock and pop, and we have the country's largest pops youth orchestra that Carl Topilow conducts, and other types of music things to meet the needs and to meet the interests of our community.

And Gerri, you also start young.

Your program spans generations from your Suzuki program, your violin program, all the way through your creative aging program.

Would you like to say more about that?

Oh, I'd love to, yes.

So among the barriers to entry are often age and abilities.

And so what we do— there's different goals at the different stages.

So we find that with the young children, that as Shayne had referenced, we want to build the whole child emotionally, developmentally, intellectually, socially.

And then also at the other end of this spectrum with older folks, we want to be able to give them opportunities through music to connect, to socialize, to reduce stress, to enforce cognitive skills.

So what we do at the Music Settlement is we start very young.

We have babies 3 weeks old in our programs, on up to people in their 90s, and then end of life in music therapy.

So we've got the whole spectrum.

It's really wonderful.

And we have many programs that start at the beginning, but one of the most prominent ones we have is our Suzuki program.

And Dr.

Suzuki believed that people learn music the way that we learn languages.

By listening and by imitating.

So these students start at 3 years of age, and they learn to play music by ear.

And then later on, they learn to read notation.

And the families, the parents are very involved at these early stages.

And this program really epitomizes for me a community music school, because these students are with us sometimes until they're 18 years old, 15 years.

And so what happens is we've got a community, of families, engaged people.

They become excellent musicians.

They develop lifelong friendships.

And then we're finding that our teachers become their coaches and their mentors and their pseudo-parents.

But at the other end of the spectrum— so in the year 2030, over 70 million of us in the United States are going to be 65 and older.

That means that 1 in every 5 people are at retirement age.

And we're living longer, we're healthier.

So what are we going to do with all those years?

So what we found is people are coming to us and they want to pick up their violins that they haven't played in 20 years because they've been so busy working.

Or what I hear all the time is, I've always wanted to take piano lessons.

Well, now's your chance.

So we— I'm so excited about this.

3 years ago, the Cleveland Foundation and Kevin Conwell through the city and other generous funders helped us launch Creative Aging, or Music for Life.

So we always had adult orchestra, we always had the Settlement Singers, but we are continuing with ages 55 and older, and some of these are also intergenerational.

But what we've added to this, a really cool steel drums program.

So now when you drive by the Settlement, you hear Caribbean music and Trinidadian, and this is really— we have a waiting list for adults to play the steel drums.

We've also put into place the last couple of weeks— last couple of years, adult camps.

Adult camps.

They love coming to camps, orchestra.

And we've got some of our adult campers here in the audience.

And finally, we are beginning an adult Suzuki class in the fall.

So this is just such a joyful time of life.

And I'm a creative ager.

So please join me.

Thank you.

I want to get one more question in before we go to our audience for Q&A, and I'm going to ask Shayne and Marcella to respond to a question around Cleveland's ecosystem.

What kind of programs and initiatives can strengthen our cultural economy in Northeast Ohio?

I, first and foremost, just collaboration between our organizations.

Collaboration.

Collaboration and, you know, ensuring that we are not reinventing the wheel.

We're sharing resources.

We are ensuring that we are aware of each other's organizations so that we can promote them as well.

I think the— what we're seeing in an ecosystem here is we have a lot of groups, we have a lot of organizations, and a lot of us are doing similar things, and we want to ensure that we are building each other up and sharing our students and ensuring that, you know, maybe our group, we may see a student that isn't the best for our group.

It may not— we may see that they're gonna fit way better over at the Rainey Institute, or they're going to fit way better with KOYO or NOYO or CYWS.

Any of these groups, we want to send them to each other and make sure that you ecosystem is collaborative.

Thank you.

I think for us at Rainey, our goal is to create pipeline initiatives for the students that we serve.

Because we start as young as kindergarten and go up through 8th grade, we recognize even that handoff from middle school to high school is one that we want to do with intention.

I think just even in the past, like, month, I've recently met with Gerri to talk about pipeline partnerships and the orchestra as well to figure out how can Rainey do strong handoffs of our 8th graders to other programs in the city that will help them to continue on their musical journey and continue to grow as artists and professionals as well.

So I think just being intentional about the way we celebrate the matriculation of the students that we serve and being able to support their continued journeys in ways that make sense, but also help them to again be a whole person.

I think we're all in agreement that it goes beyond just the moments of, you know, hours of instruction with music.

You have to realize that these are children who are in families that are in communities.

And so looking at them as a whole picture, but also I think as Jay shared, piecing the parts together and figuring out where do our organizations connect, where does Rainey services stop Where can we hand off to others in the community who can pick up the students that we serve?

I love it.

What I'm hearing is that it sounds like you all are challenging assumptions and you're interrogating yourselves to think differently about the music education ecosystem here in Cleveland.

And I'm excited to hear and I'm looking forward as we transition to this audience Q&A.

For our livestream and radio audience, or those just joining, I'm Jejuana Brown, Senior Director of Inclusion and Community Relations at the Cleveland Orchestra and moderator for today's session.

Today we are discussing the importance of accessible arts education, cultivating leadership, fostering creativity, and sustaining the arts economy for future generations Joining me on stage is Marcella Brown, Executive Director at the Rainey Institute, Gerri Presti, President and CEO of the Music Settlement, and Shayne Smith, Executive Director of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra.

We welcome questions from everyone— City Club members, guests, and those joining via our livestream at cityclub.org or radio broadcast at 89.7 Ideastream Public Media.

If you would like to text a question for our speakers, please text it to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-957— let me say that again— 330-541-5794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

May we have the first question, please?

Good afternoon.

I'm so glad that City Club is doing this program.

I'm wearing my music pants to honor you today.

But I just want to lift up my mom, my late mom, who taught music in the Cleveland District for 26 years.

And I taught also, and she came to my school and volunteered her time.

Just wanted to mention that.

But the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center, all of the students have experienced, the residents have experienced some kind of trauma.

And I love that you mentioned music therapy.

Does the Music School Settlement, do you do any volunteering at the detention center?

And I think I know that you do.

And I want you to talk about how you involve yourself with the detention center.

Detention center?

Absolutely.

Well, I will begin by saying that both in our Center for Music and in our Music Therapy Center, we have outreach programs throughout the community.

So we're working in all kinds of public schools, private schools, social service organizations, nursing homes, and so forth.

We are not yet in the detention center, but let's talk, because we do work with a variety of people with challenges.

After COVID, we find that we're doing a lot of behavioral music therapy and mental health.

When I was a music therapist, I worked with drug and alcohol addicted teenagers in a behavioral guitar program.

And this is absolutely an opportunity for us to come in and work with your youth and help them through music therapy.

It's very effective.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

This is a text question.

Can you speak to transportation?

Is it a profound issue due to being a wide, flat city for some kids, getting there is a huge issue.

Oh, absolutely.

So I would say for us at the Rainey Institute, our after-school program is structured to take place Monday through Friday, every day from 2 to 6 PM.

And so the students are actually bused to us at the grace of our ability to secure funds for busing along with school partners who have the resources or the funds to also partner and match us.

On efforts around transportation.

It's a huge barrier.

I know that a lot of districts are struggling with transportation aside from, you know, the out-of-school time space.

But I would just say for Rainey, because we are doing programming all throughout the school year, 5 days a week, it's very difficult.

Busing is expensive.

And so we're either, you know, working with families to drop kids off or hoping that You know, some of our school partners have the resources to secure transportation and partner with us, but it's a huge barrier.

I know with confidence that we could serve more students if transportation were not such an issue.

And even right now, we have a school partner who— they have a bus that can seat up to 60, and we have like 67 students.

So we already have a waitlist of students.

And this is a problem every year.

It's, it's one where if, if it were not for transportation, we would serve a lot more students.

I, I know that Shayne and I have the same issue, but again, the way that we, we help provide the music services to others are by going out in the community with these other collaborations.

So we are going to venues where people need our services and programs.

But yeah, it's an issue.

Great.

Um, hello, good afternoon everyone.

I just want to say thank you again for all the incredible work that you do.

I also grew up with music in the house, but I managed to find my way into a creative space, and I had mentors that sort of ushered me into a creative professional space.

So, as a musical theater professional, my question to you is, in your programs, what flag do you point to on the hill for students that may be interested in going into this professionally?

As a musical theater person, I can look to Great Lakes Theater or Cleveland Public Theater, I see these entities in the Cleveland ecosystem that I can point my parents to and say, okay, yeah, your kids could work at any of these places here in town.

What would you say to the parents who have musically inclined kids that are super, super talented, and you could say, you know what, you could go here and you can actually earn a living?

How would you— what would you point to here in this Cleveland ecosystem?

I would say, well, first of all, thank you.

That's an amazing question.

The Contemporary Youth Orchestra, what we really pride ourselves in is that connection to that career kind of pathways.

But I think what has to happen first is an understanding that contemporary music reflects our world today.

A lot of students at times believe that classical or orchestral music is not not for them because we are seeing, you know, Mozart, Beethoven, people who do not look like people in our community all the time.

And they say, that is not for me.

Classical music and orchestral music is for everybody.

And this is something that we really want to push with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra by having living composers, having composers, people of color, ensuring we have queer composers, women composers, And these sort of people that reflect the community of Cleveland, the city of Cleveland that we live in.

So that being that first pathway is saying, yes, this is possible for you.

You can do this.

And also it also being beyond a talent-based thing.

Okay.

So when I was growing up, I played saxophone.

I started later than a lot of my peers.

And when I went into the first couple of days of band, I was, I was under the impression everybody else was better than me.

Everybody else, you know, was going to rise to the, to the occasion quicker than I was.

And there were clear people who I knew were going into music ed or music performance after high school.

And I was like, well, I'm not that caliber.

What we need to also focus students on is the music industry, not just so much performance and education, like I said before, but ensuring that they're not saying, I'm not good enough.

We say, you are good enough, and there are so many different ways for you to be involved in music in a post-secondary setting.

Sofia, that's a great question, and I think again what I go back to is music training gives us some of the skills that employers want: the creative problem-solving, the discipline, confidence, collaboration.

Employees seek those skills, and I think with all of us, it's offering the diversity and the panoply of what they can engage in, whether it's singing or playing in Suzuki or African drumming or whatever.

And I think by presenting these opportunities and making them available, people can find their talents and their interests and their passions.

And then we can guide them on a pathway to the workforce through the way that the Contemporary Youth Orchestra does it and the way that we hope to do it in our technology lab.

At the Rainey Institute, we are intentional about taking our students out of our 4 walls and into the community by way of field trips.

Because it's a great opportunity for the students to go out and see, like, how is it this thing that I'm doing every day after school or in summer camp, where is this going?

You know, like kids, they have a short attention span, so you have to keep them excited about the things that they're working towards.

And again, because Rainey does a variety of disciplines, we're intentional about selecting field trips that will reflect the variety of ways that the arts can lead to vibrant careers.

So, for example, this summer we took the students to see The Lion King.

And so, you know, across all of our programs, there was a way for every student in every discipline.

Visual art could see the costumes and the materials that were created about the production.

Our music program students, it's a, it's a musical.

So you can hear people singing, you can hear the instruments.

Our dance department students were able to see the choreography within the production, and it is a drama, so, you know, you're able to see that as well.

But taking them out into the community, the wonderful thing about Cleveland, we have such amazing arts organizations.

So being intentional about leveraging field trips and outside experiences is a way for us to show the students that, you know, this is what a path of visual art can lead you to, or music or dance.

And so making sure that they see see that if you stay on this path and you work hard, you can get there.

Thank you.

We talk about football and baseball, and, you know, I'm the home of the mighty, mighty Top Bloods, Glenville.

And we— and I say that to say this, because we're always pushing football, but the arts also build character and self-esteem and all of that.

So, and that's what you practice, Jeffrey.

With the students.

I'm Council Member Kevin Conwell.

Matter of fact, I am an artist.

I've been playing for over 50-so was at the Rainey Institute of Music a while back.

Matter of fact, I taught there back in the '80s and '90s, and that's also as well as the Music School Settlement.

So whenever a lot of the different programs reach out to the city of Cleveland, we help out.

We help out because we know the way.

I just got to find out more about you also, because I love the orchestra.

And the thing about the orchestra music is teaches the foundation.

A lot of your great musicians like Miles Davis went through, and I studied symphony orchestra as well.

So we study those kind of things.

But here's my question.

Knowing that we build, because it's important for me to know, because I got to— how do we— how are we going going to build relationships with CMSD, with Jeffrey Allen and the rest of them?

Children need to see success and to be put in that place.

And if they're working and playing their drums and keeping up noise and all those kind of beautiful things, then they're not in the streets.

And that way we can cut back on crime in the city of Cleveland.

And that's what you guys are doing.

So how can we build a relationship with CMSD?

Well, I— why don't you Tri-C, but with CMSD, with the children?

Absolutely.

Well, I want to also thank Jeffrey Allen for the hard work that he does with CMSD.

This summer we were fortunate to host a forum in partnership with the Consortium for Arts Education here in Cleveland, and Jeffrey Allen was a speaker along with Dr.

Morgan.

Just reaffirming the district's commitment to the arts and letting us know that, you know, despite the challenges that the district is facing, the closures and, you know, kind of the merging of schools, that the district is truly committed to the arts being a vibrant part of formal education here in the city of Cleveland.

So I think, you know, it's going to require us to come together and come alongside and figure out how we can partner intentionally The district, of course, has facilitated a process of working with organizations like all of ours to bring us into the schools and to offer programming.

And so I think just understanding and, you know, giving the district time to adjust to the changes that are taking place, but also being intentional about how we serve and how we plug ourselves in and make space available for the arts to continue to thrive for the students.

And the Music Settlement also participated a lot in the CMSD schools.

When the Say Yes program came about, we were pilot projects both for music therapy and for music education.

And I think what's really important too is we don't come in, as Shayne said, and say everybody's going to learn Mozart.

We find out what the needs and the interests are.

Is it guitar playing, African drumming, Delcrows, composition?

And then we find the right faculty member to come in and work with you all.

But thank you for keeping up your programs.

But where there are gaps, where there are defundings and schools are closing, it's up to all of us too to fill those gaps, to make sure that our children get the arts education that they need, because we need the butts in seats at the orchestra in the years to come.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I will comment on that as well.

The Contemporary Youth Orchestra, we have Chris Moran as our music director.

I think he's in room somewhere.

There he is.

Yeah.

So Chris is our music director.

Yes, please.

He's constantly reaching out to students.

But this is actually— this is the CYO staff right here, is the 2 of us.

So, you know, it is— it is— we are doing the best we can to get out to teachers.

And the main thing we want to do with CYO is connect directly with teachers, ensure that they see us as a support system for their existing programs.

So, I worked in public education for a long time, and in that public education day-to-day, it is rare that you get to that email and you get to that flyer that's gotten sent in the mail to you and getting that to the actual student because you're having a student with a meltdown in the hallway, you're dealing with an angry parent, you're dealing with an administrative issue, and the last thing you're likely doing is looking at that email and saying, oh, this is, you know, that's very low on the priority list for a lot of people who are trying to help their students survive and get through the day.

So we are trying to make those connections directly with teachers and make sure we're seen as that support system, and we do that by coming to you.

We want to make sure that we are offering workshops, we're offering opportunities for us to come in and listen in and also run sectionals.

Anything that we can do to come to you, we're available.

So there are educators in the room that would benefit, um, from us coming in and just chatting and making a connection with your kids, give you time to finish your coffee, then we would love to do it.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the Cleveland Orchestra also has a strong partnership with CMSD, um, and my colleague Joan Katz Napoli, who opened us up, shared some of that.

So I invite you to either reach out to her or check us out on the website.

But we are seeing progress and we have pipelines and pathway programs that span, and we're actually seeing progress.

So I'm very excited about it.

I won't talk more about it, but I had to put the plug in there.

I promise there will be a question mark.

But first, I want to affirm and give you all snaps for your commitment to employment in that the arts as an industry in our region is the 2nd fastest growing employment area.

So keep doing what you're doing.

Thank you for your work on making sure kids find their people, their passion, and their purpose.

And I want to return to the Promethean fire that is AI.

And this is the question.

You've answered to some degree, but with the reduction in what would've been gatekeeping a century, over the last century, where you had to have a certain skill level in order to have access to the arts, How do you specifically make sure that kids are grounded in the fundamentals of their learning prior to going into the technological tools?

And that's what they are.

They're simply tools in a different expression.

Can you give a couple of good concrete examples of what you do to get kids grounded in those fundamentals?

I can start.

I think that our existence just within the music ecosystem is an example of tiered music education.

And with those fundamentals, those only are going to exist if we invest in public education and we invest in teachers and we invest in the people who see the students before we see the students.

So ensuring that we are making partnerships with CMSD, ensuring that we are making partnerships with the Rainey Institute to ensure that that foundation is accessible and it's something that the community of Cleveland is aware of and knows how to support.

I think a lot of people think that music is not something that they necessarily need to support all the time because they might not play an instrument, they not they may not have a music background.

So they're like, well, somebody's supporting the Cleveland Orchestra.

They're great, right?

And it's, in reality, it's hard for any arts institute right now.

So just making sure that we're supporting each other in a collaborative way, investing in public education, investing in our teachers, and ensuring that they feel supported by us, those fundamentals are going to come easier with more teachers, a teacher-to-student ratio that makes sense, and, you know, Proper compensation.

Thank you.

I just want to follow up, Jeff.

I think I took your question a different way.

What are the fundamentals that we teach before we get to AI?

And I think that the way— I think that the way that we do that is offer a diversity of programs.

But what we do at the Music Settlement along with Suzuki is we have programs like Eurythmics and Delcrows.

So even before the kids get to learning notes in music, they're learning through movement rhythm, tempo, phrasing, dynamics, and then it gets them into that pathway of learning music.

But then we have a full immersion jazz program.

They're learning theory, they're learning their individual instruments, then they're earning the ensemble work.

So as Shayne referred to, it's that gradual level thing up to.

Hello everyone, my name is Gina Washington.

I'm a teacher at Rainey Institute and I was a parent at Rainey Institute.

Um, I want you to know that my mother started me in music education at the age of 3, and in the East Cleveland school systems I thrived because it was required in the 3rd grade that we all take music.

So, 2-part question: what would you say to the young adult or the young parent with children, how would you get them started in music and would you even advise that?

And the second part, there's so many nuances when it comes to neurodivergence.

How do you guys handle that in your institutions?

So I know for the Rainey Institute, we ask parents to approach neurodivergence with radical transparency.

Because we are not a school district, our access to things like medical records and educational plans is somewhat limited.

And so the more a parent is willing to share with us about the unique needs of their child, the better we can kind of accommodate the needs of their, their aspiring artist within the walls of the Rainey Institute.

So encouraging that radical transparency with parents is kind of how we approach it.

And we ensure that— and as you know, you're a teacher at Rainey, but You know, we really try to ensure that the environment that we create within the organization is one of accommodation, comfort, and again, honoring the dignity of the students that we serve.

I would strongly recommend early exposure to music and really all forms of art at an early age.

At Rainey, we partner with various preschool organizations and daycare centers to bring students to both of our sites.

In order to provide early exposure to students aged 3 to 5.

And the goal being the earlier that you're exposed to music, the more you become comfortable with it.

You also kind of see it in the bigger picture of, you know, it's, it's a part of your everyday life.

But when you're starting at that young of an age, it's easier to kind of make it be more apparent and make it more a part of your day-to-day experience.

And so for us, it's very important that students start at a young age.

And I would encourage, you know, as many community partners as possible.

I know the Music Settlement also has an early education site on the West Side.

And so those early moments of exposure and leveraging arts-based learning really enable and empower young people to thrive.

And I would agree with that.

As I said, we start music instruction and movement at age 3 weeks.

But for the neurodivergency, this is where music therapy comes in handy.

And we have students, clients we call them, diagnosed on the autism spectrum coming to us at 18 months.

And a lot of our students that are developmentally disabled and have other challenges are with us.

I have to tell you, I have a client that has been with us for 45 years.

And some of these, though, children with these special needs are able to transition, which is really wonderful, from music therapy into regular music instruction.

Instruction.

They're taking piano lessons, they're taking voice lessons.

So I would encourage that.

Yeah, and I think CYO does a really fabulous job of creating an environment of inclusion, and that happens from, you know, the first time they step into an audition room, to rehearsals, to the concerts, to interactions with any of the staff or any of the faculty.

The sense of inclusion and welcoming is a core belief for CYO.

We think that, you know, allyship or any sort of support is a verb.

It's not something you get to call yourself.

It's something that you have to act on.

It's something that you have to perform, and you have to follow up.

And one of the best things that we can do is ensure that our students who are, you know, experiencing needing assistive devices, having special needs, we're showing that transparency not only between them and their parent, but also peer-to-peer.

We're ensuring that students know that they can have that assistive device out, and we encourage it.

We encourage them to do what makes them feel comfortable in the space to be the best music maker in the room that day.

And as far as, Getting younger students involved, I'm always going to say that music making is one part of interacting with music.

Music appreciation, being able to listen to music, being able to analyze music, being able to produce music is an art form in itself.

A lot of parents think, I can't either— I don't have the financial ability to afford an instrument right now, or I can't get my student to a choir rehearsal, or that is just not for us, we can't manage that right now.

You can still have music education in your home and in your student's life without making music.

It's the idea of interacting with music.

It's kind of like Jennifer Coleman from the Gund Foundation— we had a talk the other day— there's an on-ramp for music education, and it doesn't always have to be performance or music making.

Thank you.

Thank you, Marcella, Gerri, Shayne, and Jejuana.

Thank you so much for joining us at the City Club.

Feel like I need to go practice my clarinet now.

Uh, I'm Cynthia Connolly, Senior Director of Programming here at the City Club, and forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a Guardian of Free speech at cityclub.org.

Today's forum is the Lisa Botnick, Karen Faith Witt, and A.H.

Weinstein Memorial Forum.

Thank you once again for being here.

Have a great weekend.

The forum is now adjourned.

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