Carole’s Music House[This year's "Alternative Models" Fellowship Seminar featured My Presentation grappled with one of the main issues that I have dealt with in my life as a musician: Musicians tend to flock to big cities where all the resources and jobs are. This leaves the rural communities–like the ones I grew up in–without many serious professional musicians to share their knowledge. I was always one of the few violinists in my towns when I was growing up, and it was rare to ever find a professional string player coming to visit and do concerts. My presentation focused on a specific community, although this model could be implemented anywhere. I took the concept of having a Retreat Center for musicians and planting it in an isolated community in Northern Canada. (We're talking really, really Northern.)
Carole's Music House will be a place where musicians can come to a creativity-inspiring place to work on a project, in turn for teaching lessons, masterclasses and workshops. Performances will always happen throughout and at the end of each residency, and tours to neighboring towns may be involved. The program will thrive on the permanently situated teacher(s) who the artists-in-residence will collaborate with on the teaching and performing aspects of the program. My mission is: To create a safe environment where learning music and learning self expression become one and the same. Both young and old artists can come to this creative haven. To situate music into the middle of the community so that kids can learn from their early childhood years that music is a gift that they can give to people, instead of it being an unobtainable art form that has nothing to do with them. When I asked my colleagues if they would be interested in coming to a place like Carole's Music House, the response was an overwhelming "Absolutely!" which proves to me that this dual issue can be solved in this type of way. High quality musicians are interested in coming to rural communities, and a community will benefit from a full time strings teacher who is dedicated to bringing good quality music education and good quality performances to all of the community. To accompany my presentation, I made a visual of what Carole's Music House would look like in real life, and you can see it here.
-Carole Bestvater, Fellow |
