On April 27th 2021 The Canadian Network for Arts and Learning held a panel discussion, led by The VSO School of Music and the Labrador Arts Festival, in which we explored how organizations working in two very different contexts overcame seemingly insurmountable challenges to deliver meaningful arts experiences to students within a global pandemic. See the full video of the webinar below.
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra School of Music was one of the first music schools in the country to pivot to online learning at the onset of the pandemic. Through this panel discussion, we explored some of the major challenges they encountered, ways they reached out to new virtual students, their accomplishments as well as their plans for moving forward post-pandemic.
On the opposite coast, the Labrador Creative Arts Festival faced a completely different set of challenges when shifting to an online format – from lack of reliable internet, to connecting school communities with remote artists, to video production from a distance and more. Throughout this discussion we discovered the steps they took to engage their students despite the odds.
The panelists:
Angela Elster, President & CEO, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Gillian Hunter Gibbs, Director, VSO School of Music
Louise Ironside, Director, Marketing & Communications VSO School of Music
Tim Borlase, Founder, Labrador Creative Arts Festival
Sandra Broomfield, Festival Coordinator, Labrador Creative Arts Festival
Jamie Lewis, Film Producer, Labrador Creative Arts Festival
We are grateful for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Azrieli Foundation for the Discoverability Webinar Series.
