We Are Designers!

My friend and colleague, Geung Kroeker-Lee, has a passion for urban design. He believes that “our environment can/should inspire us, and shape our behaviour.”

This belief spills over into his musical life. He recently gave a presentation to choral colleagues, where he presented this definition of a healthy community from the Canadian Institute of Planners’ Policy on Healthy Communities Planning:

... a healthy community is defined as “a place where healthy built, social, economic, and natural environments give citizens the opportunity to live to their full potential,” regardless of their socially, culturally, or economically defined circumstances.
A healthy community allows “people to come together to make their community better for themselves, their family, their friends, their neighbours, and others.
A healthy community creates ongoing dialogue, generates leadership opportunities for all, embraces diversity, connects people and resources, fosters a sense of community, and shapes its own future.”

This definition already speaks to me, but he has adapted it for choral communities:

... a healthy choir community is defined as “a group of people where healthy built, social environments give individuals the opportunity to sing to their full potential,” regardless of their musical background, training, or socially/culturally defined circumstances.
A healthy choir community allows “individuals to come together to create beauty, develop empathy and understanding, and through singing make their wider community better for themselves, their family, their friends, their neighbours, and others.
A healthy choir community creates ongoing dialogue, generates leadership opportunities for all, embraces diversity, connects people and resources, fosters a sense of community, and shapes its own future.”

I love this.

For Geung, taking the time to be mindful planners of our choral community is as important as the music we create, and that it isn’t much different than a city planner designing a neighbourhood.

He has admitted to me that he loves thinking about the start of the choral season: How can we set the tone for the whole season from the very beginning? What foundational pieces do we lay to ensure that our communities stay resilient and healthy? How do routines define and shape our community’s behaviour?

These are worthwhile questions to consider – especially as we start to look forward to rehearsing in-person again.

Designing a community might seem daunting, but it is well worth the effort! Don’t forget: Good Community = Good Music.

Here are some of Geung’s suggestions for starting a new choral season from a community design perspective:

1. Consider having a “returning members meeting” (an idea we have both learned from our Edmonton colleague, Katy Luyk) where your returning members can see each other and catch up, reminisce about the previous season, and close the previous chapter together. They can then welcome the new members with open arms, ready for new connections.

2. For the first rehearsal, don’t set up rows of chairs right away. Allow people to greet each other and mingle (as opposed to only meeting the one or two people right next to them, or only their section-mates). Do your warm-up, some ice breakers, and move around the whole available space while encouraging your singers to interact with each other.

3. Invite your choir members to help define what the community will look like for the season. Put up chart paper with some prompts and markers, and ask your singers to add to them anonymously and at their leisure. The prompts could be: what are their personal goals for the season, their goals for the choir, what do they need from each other, and from the artistic staff. Read them out and discuss, or type them up and print it for everyone (perhaps as a word cloud).

As conductors, we wear many hats and do many jobs, but our goal at the heart of it all is to bring people together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Mindfully designing healthy choir communities is one aspect of that.

We are community designers! Let’s make healthy choir communities!

Outward Inclusivity

Choir is often seen as a safe place for people to be themselves and explore their identities, especially for high school students or young adults. So how do we, as conductors, guarantee that for them?

Right now there is a wonderful shift in the choral community towards gender inclusivity.

For example, we can be accurate in rehearsal and stop saying “men” or “women” when we really mean “basses” or “sopranos”. We can revamp dress codes to give a range of options/guidelines, without tying it to gender or voice parts. We can talk about policies with boards and choir members. We can wear nametags with our pronouns.

These are all wonderful and necessary changes that every choir and conductor should make. But they are internal, and we can do even better.

We need to make sure that a potential member sees that choir is a safe place and that they will be welcome before they even join.

Some ideas of what this outward inclusivity looks like:

1. Using inclusive/accurate language in the name of the choir: Upper Voices, Lower Voices, Bass Clef Choir, Trebles.

2. Updating forms and information gathering tools to include a spot for people to put their pronouns, so that from their very first interaction with the choir, we respect who they are.

3. Being explicitly inclusive in the description of the choir. For example, one of the first things someone reads about my ensemble Winnipeg Upper Voices is: “We welcome women, men, trans, and non-binary singers.”

4. Using inclusive language at concerts and in programs. This could be by swapping out “ladies and gentlemen” for “everyone” in introductory remarks: “Welcome, everyone, to the big show!” Artist biographies in the program can include pronouns: “Katy Harmer (she/her) is the conductor.”

These changes should be made without fanfare and without it being a big deal. But they will be noticed by the people who need to see them the most.

Being more inclusive benefits everyone, and ensures that our choirs actually are the safe places we strive for them to be.

Simple, but Powerful

A prof once asked my undergrad music education class to state our personal philosophy of music for an assignment. I had no idea how to answer it, so I made something up that sounded plausible. Only now, many years later, can I actually lay claim to my own philosophy of music making. 

It is simple:

Good Community = Good Music

Simple to say, yes, but there are so many facets to explore in what can contribute to “good community.” At a basic level, I believe that if the people making music together care for and about each other, the music will be better and performances more impactful. 

The singers who feel supported and part of a community will be comfortable to be vulnerable with each other when they sing together. They will get on stage and be able to connect directly with the audience because they genuinely connect with each other.

That is when the magic happens. That is how you hook the people who have always thought choir is boring, and show them how engaging it can be.

There is so much more to this idea, but for now, you can see it in action with this Bon Iver piece sung by Prairie Voices. This choir has always strived to have a culture of strong community and connection between its members.

Here, they lay all their emotions out and aren’t ashamed or scared of them. I never had to demand or cajole or convince them to do it, we talked about the song and the text, and they did the rest.

It is powerful music. It is powerful community.