School House Symphony
P.O> Box 36494
Cincinnati, OH 45236
Teaching Tomorrow's Audience Today
School House Symphony presents imaginative multicultural music education programs to pre-school and elementary age children throughout the greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area. These programs feature performances and discussions of music from different cultures and periods of time, including folk, jazz, classical, and popular music. SHS would like to request $30,000. These funds would be used for operating support, to continue a Dater Foundation funded project begun in the 2011-2012 season of providing free programs to the entire student body of the CISE (Catholic Inner-city) schools, and to present programs for schools interested in receiving SHS programs but are unable to afford them. Operating support, which is increasingly harder to find, is vital to keeping SHS rates affordable. Due to the generous support from organizations such as the Charles H. Dater Foundation, SHS has been able to keep rates unchanged for over a decade! For the past several seasons, SHS has had to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our schools. All performances in the 2020-2021 season were entirely virtual, and our 2021-2022 season saw us returning to in-school performances but with far fewer schools having SHS performances. Our recently completed 2022-2023 season was very close to pre-Covid levels of performances, and the upcoming 2023-2024 season will hopefully see SHS performing over 250 in school programs.
Program Goals:
There were several goals in this grant proposal. SHS hoped to achieve close to pre-pandemic performance numbers (250 plus music education programs in over 60 different Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky schools), and to keep subscription rates affordable to these schools. Another was to provide SHS programs to 9 Cincinnati C.I.S.E schools (Catholic Inner-city Schools Education) free of charge to the schools.
Finally, SHS received additional funds to help schools with financial need who were unable to afford SHS programming, and for schools who are receiving SHS programs but are unable to afford a complete series of programs.
Program Results:
School House Symphony presented 250 in-school programs at 73 different schools in our just concluded 2023-2024 season. SHS was also able to keep subscription rates unchanged for the 16th straight season. Using funds provided by the Charles H. Dater Foundation, SHS presented programs at each of the Cincinnati C.I.S.E. locations. (2 performances at each school). SHS also provided additional no cost programs to schools unable to afford SHS programs.
Website:
http://www.schoolhousesymphony.org Amount: $30,000
Date: June 2023
