Community Engagement

The Festival is also dedicated to fostering the next generation of arts administrators. For the past several years, our organization has hired college-age interns to assist with administrative tasks in Marketing and Development, Box Office and Production during the Festival each summer. With support from MCACA’s “New Leaders Arts Council of Michigan Retention and Engagement” program, opportunities for professional development have flourished through this grant funding–not only to help underwrite stipends, but to give them greater access to resources that teach them about interviewing, donor engagement and public speaking.

Three of our current staff members were first introduced to us as interns or apprentices.

GLCMF is firmly committed to being a welcoming, inclusive cultural organization, one that will fully embrace, respect, and value the diverse voices and shared experiences of all – on the stage, in the community, and in all aspects of the organization.

As the Festival has grown, so too has our responsibility to the community in which we live and work. The Festival included activities in many non-traditional spaces:

• A concert in cooperation with Southwest Solutions at Piquette Square, a residence for homeless veterans in Detroit
• Educational services for elementary students in the Pontiac Schools, in partnership with Accent Pontiac, with support from the Filmer Trust
• A seminar, open rehearsal and question/answer session on non-verbal communication with a Shouse Institute ensemble for medical students at Wayne State University

The Festival maintains an ongoing relationship with the Sphinx organization. Each year, Sphinx provides a young ensemble or musician to act as apprentices, participating along with Shouse ensembles in coachings and performance opportunities.

These activities are an extension of services that the Festival has taken over the last several years to spread more thoroughly throughout our community. For example, in the summer of 2018, we partnered with such disparate organizations as Holy Redeemer Church (Southwest Detroit), Slow Roll and the Charles H. Wright Museum. At the latter, we commissioned an African American classical composer, a jazz trio, a hip-hop artist and an electronic musician to each create their take on a seminal piece of art in the Museum’s collection.

Festival artists participate throughout the year in a number of educational and engagement activities. Past education programs include residencies in the Bloomfield Hills, Pontiac and Dearborn Schools. In the latter, the Festival delivered a program entitled “Code to Compose,” simultaneously teaching students how to write music and computer code. Festival musicians also provided services at Detroit’s Holy Redeemer School. Funding for these programs has come from a variety of sources, including the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Filmer Trust and a number of generous individual donors.