3 Building your toolkit
You are now going to complete an activity designed to help you think through the things you’ll need to consider when diversifying your repertoire. You will then be able to use this as a practical toolkit, which you can apply to diversifying your own repertoire. Think of this like a checklist to help you work through key stages of the process
Activity 3
Imagine your ideal concert including or consisting entirely of music by women. Fill in the blank sections of the toolkit below of the steps you’ll need to work through to bring it all together.
A Word version of the toolkit is also available if you would prefer to work in that way: Toolkit [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
Practical considerations
What is the venue?
What is the date and time of the concert (if known)?
Who is your likely audience (list all likely people/groups who might attend)?
Who will be performing?
Funding
What are your sources of funding?
Are there any particular sources of funding that you can apply for? (Remember to think about organisations which specifically promote the performance of women’s music.)
Do you have additional costs? (For example, will you need to factor in additional rehearsal time for performers to learn new works? Will you have to pay for someone to prepare a new performance edition? Will you need to hire a music scholar as consultant?)
Planning your programme
Are you going to present an all-woman concert or are you going to add works by women into a mixed programme?
Where are you going to source your scores?
Do you need to prepare/commission a new performance edition?
Do you need to identify a specialist music scholar to work with?
Are you commissioning a new work?
Building your audience
Who is going to write your programme notes?
Are you going to offer a pre-concert talk to offer more contextual information about the woman/women whose music you are performing?
Are you going to undertake any outreach/education activities?
Who is going to help you build your audience? For example, do you need to identify and work with a music scholar? If you are presenting the work of living women composers/music-creators, do you want to involve them? Will you be reaching out to and working with local community groups and/or education providers?