More about community engagement

The most important benefit to our field from the Detroit strike will be the ever-necessary reminder that strikes are a sub-optimal method of resolving labor-management disputes. The next most important benefit will be the jump-starting of the discussion about what’s come to be known as “community engagement.” Whether either of those will be worth the cost to those in Detroit, as well the rest of the field affected by the PR fallout, is a question I will leave to those better at predicting the future than I.

But it’s past time we had a public discussion about community engagement. Polyphonic senior editor Laura Brownell wrote about community engagement in this post. Yesterday, Henry Peyrebrune, a member of the Cleveland Orchestra and a bright and articulate advocate of a generally traditional approach to orchestras, wrote the first of three posts on Drew McManus’ Adaptistration site. It’s worth reading.

I’m going to try to do my own multi-post take on the subject next week.