 Muriel Paéz Rasmussen, myself and Joseph Thapa, in the orange-tree-filled square outside the Fundación Barenboim-Said, Seville. “Remember Dudamel?” Joseph says to me as we walk to a cafe. “I don’t understand the question.”
I’ve just explained to him the divide that artists often encounter in Australia — from the public, from funding bodies, from agents, from each other — between what counts as ‘excellence’ (‘high art’) and ‘community engagement’. The word ‘community’ often spells the death-knell for any artistic project to be taken seriously as a piece of art worthy of professional representation, as my colleagues and I on Cad Factory projects have often discussed. It bothers me. Firstly, because quite frankly I think it’s wrong, and secondly, because it can be an excuse to marginalise or under-resource work or artists seen as worthy, but not good. Joseph finds it wrong-headed, too. Joseph reminds me that on Monday, I told him and Muriel that it was the excellence of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s Beethoven recording that made me pay attention to them, and want to find out what was behind the organisation. The orchestra isn’t a salaried institution, but it was nevertheless their standard that caught my attention in the first place. “The point is not to have the best orchestra compared to Berliner Philharmoniker,” Joseph says. “The point is to make the best music with [your musicians] — the best they can do.” He points out that even if an ensemble only gets 70% of the way to excellence, if everyone has put in 150%, “you get a lot of things: you get craftsmanship, making music, excellence within their own possibility, and, on the other side, a lot of self-esteem, and the possibility to grow within their project.” Aiming for excellence is a pre-requisite for Barenboim-Said projects. What excellence looks like for three-year-olds is an open question, but part of the answer is focussing on ensuring excellent teaching. I’ve been watching that all week with Vicente. In Australia, Maestro Daniel Barenboim is mostly known for his work with the world’s top symphony orchestras. With this in mind, I ask why three-year-old kids are part of the Barenboim-Said Fundación’s work. Joseph responds, “Why not? Barenboim always said that music education should start as early as possible. There’s also a neuroscientific justification: from 0-7, 8, 9, is the biggest development in the brains of children. Not only cognitive, but social changes and emotional changes.” Music can influence all these things, as well as being another kind of language, so if you want music to assist the brain at its most plastic, it has to be as early as possible. The Fundación’s teachers aren’t selected for any particular training. Their teachers may have backgrounds in Dalcroze like Vicente, or Orff, Kodaly and others. They’re selected for their skill and their ability to understand the children in each class. And the kids adore Vicente. I tell Joseph about my second day at school in Polígono Sur. I arrived first. A minute later, there’s a suspiciously Vicente-shaped tower of child in the courtyard. One child envelopes his torso, and one clings to each of his legs. He is so adored, he is regularly mobbed by kids. He finds ways to connect with each one, subtly shifting tasks to ensure each child can have small wins. Some kids demonstrate really impressive aural skills, but when Vicente and I talk afterwards, he says that the children’s personal circumstances — lack of sleep, disrupted home life, all the disadvantages that go along with poverty — means learning rarely sticks. He types something into Google translate for me: “Teaching here is like building a sandcastle on the beach.” I type back: “At least kids have fun building sandcastles.” Maybe it’s not a lot in the grand scheme of each child’s life, but it’s something. It’s a possibility. For some, it could be a beginning. It’s certainly respite — and isn’t that also important? My first class with Vicente at the school holiday camp complete, I get in a cab to the Barenboim-Said Fundación. The sun shines hot and bright, and the streets of the Polígono Sur are quiet. I’m moved by what I’ve seen in the school. As I head to the taxi, I consider taking photos of the streets around me, the most immediate way to communicate Polígono Sur’s reality. But I’m reluctant. For approximately fifty thousand people, this area is home, and likely the only home available to them. That they are getting on with life here deserves respect. Neighbourhoods like Polígono Sur were constructed in most major Andalusian cities from the 1940s, and most parts of Europe have their own versions: neighbourhoods on the edge of town into which the underprivileged were channeled, developed in the 1940s but exploding in the 1970s, and, from the looks of it, with no significant building investment since then. Fifty-year-old apartment blocks, with no maintenance evident and built cheaply to begin with, house an average of seven people per dwelling, quarantined from the city by a riverbed, a ring road and train tracks. The taxi may as well be Cinderella’s carriage bearing me from Polígono Sur to Seville’s extravagantly beautiful city centre. Through its window I see for the first time the city’s cobbled streets, massive parks, countless facades in white, gold and terracotta, horse-drawn carriages, and iridescent tiles. The line between these two parts of Seville is the most profound culture shock I experience on my travels. The Fundación is in a tiny cobbled square which also houses the public entry to the Real Alcázar, the tenth century palace still used by the Spanish royal family, and which has a view of the Giralda, Seville Cathedral’s astonishingly tall bell-tower. My taxi pulls into the square through a massive stone arch, does a brief circuit of the central orange grove, and lets me out, still covered in the dust of the school yard, in this fairytale arena. I push the Barenboim Said Fundación’s doorbell. Joseph greets me. He’s a thoughtful and intense person, wholly dedicated to excellence and access in music education, which is his focus at the Fundación. Every stage of musical life is somehow covered with a Fundación offering managed by Joseph or one of his colleagues: early childhood music projects like the one I’ve been attending; a school of 135 kids where everyone receives a violin or cello and daily lessons; an orchestral academy; public workshops; teacher training; professional performance opportunities such as those provided by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and more. There are over two thousand participants a year. Joseph tells me about an interview he once saw with conductor Gustavo Dudamel, being asked why he encouraged so many people to learn an instrument when there weren’t enough professional orchestras to employ them all. Dudamel’s response: “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the question.” A perfect answer to a misguided question suggesting that the only value in learning music was its earning potential. The fact that the Fundación, in its beautiful setting, already has a well-developed relationship with Polígono Sur, a place of limited opportunity, shows why Dudamel’s words have stayed with Joseph. We go upstairs to meet Muriel Páez Rasmussen, the Fundación’s Managing Director. Within five minutes, it’s clear she’s the kind of person that could probably do a pretty good job of running the world, if only somebody gave her a crack at it. But instead she’s here, and, like Joseph, has been for twenty years — she says she still feels lucky. Both she and Joseph talk at length about the experience of working with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Maestro Daniel Barenboim. While an orchestra of Arab and Israeli musicians has always had its tensions, things are even more difficult in 2025, both for the musicians within the orchestra, and those working to resource it. I ask about the music school in Ramallah and Muriel says it’s all still running; most of the teachers the Barenboim-Said foundations provide now have such long ties there, they’ve chosen to stay. She and Joseph advise me to watch ‘Knowledge is the Beginning’, which documents the lead-up to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s 2005 performance in Ramallah. Joseph sends me the link and Mel and I watch the documentary in our apartment (just over the tracks from Polígono Sur). I cry three times. While I know not everyone agrees with Barenboim’s stance on Israeli-Palestinian relations, especially in Israel, one thing in the documentary is very clear: Barenboim appears painfully aware that speaking his mind will come at a personal cost. He’s frightened. At one point, he even says so. I don’t think the fear is for his person. It’s for knowing that speaking what he feels to be true will not win him unreserved adulation. And as a conductor at the height of his powers, who’s had his share of standing ovations, he could be forgiven for resting on his laurels, rather than making art that is clearly challenging him and others. A journalist rather scathingly asks him what it is he expects to achieve by performing a solo piano recital in Palestine - world peace? Barenboim’s answer is very simple. “One the one hand, I came to stretch a hand, and play a little music, because that’s what I can do,” says the Maestro. “On the other hand, I came to learn.” Back to school for me tomorrow, in the Polígono Sur.  It’s 10 o’clock in the morning and I’m crouched on a mat patterned with zoo animals and dusty shoe-prints, surrounded by kids volleying Spanish at me. The only English in the room comes from the young girl sitting next to me, who is singing ‘Happy birthday to you’ on repeat (the only English she knows). I’m here at the invitation of Seville’s Fundación Barenboim-Said, whom I contacted in my quest to learn more about the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded and directed by one of the world’s most famous conductors, Maestro Daniel Barenboim, and his friend and ally, philosopher Edward Said.
Earlier this morning, Joseph Thapa, Coordinator of Music Education Projects for the Fundación, met me at my hotel and walked me to get coffee before we taxied to Asociación Entre Amigos for our 9.30 meeting. Joseph tells me that from my hotel to the other side of the railway tracks is really another world: the Polígono Sur, Seville’s most disadvantaged area, into which the gitanos (Romani) were pushed during gentrification of the city centre, and which is now also home to many migrant communities. Entre Amigos runs out of a small, bright office in the heart of Polígono Sur. At 9.30am there are already two women in the waiting area, here for any one of a number of services offered: family support, job support, health advice, education. The Director greets me in the way I learn pretty fast is standard for Seville - this is a two-kiss country, important to know - and even though I don’t speak Spanish, I feel welcome. Together, we walk across to the school. Even within this short distance, I can see both the area’s difficulties, evident in the piles of rubbish, broken glass in the gutters, and dilapidated apartments blocks, as well as the work locals are doing to raise their community’s reputation, reflected in the vibrant street art encouraging recycling, the trees in blossom from the dusty verges, the high school’s rainbow facade. The school’s already buzzing with kids of all ages, just wrapping up their morning meeting about this year’s theme for summer camp - health. Music pumps from outdoor speakers and kids young and old dance off their morning energy before the high schoolers pile into buses for an excursion, and the little kids scatter into classrooms. Throughout all, teams of young volunteers and teachers in forest green T-shirts keep up both the energy and the control. I meet Vicente López Romero, the music teacher provided by the Fundación Barenboim-Said. He’s a tall, slightly frazzled-looking man who transforms into a bundle of mischievous energy when faced with a handful of small kids. His English is better than my Spanish but it’s clear I’ll mostly be learning by mime and absorption. I do have enough Spanish to understand that we’ll be covering three classes each day: three, four, and five-year-olds. This is way younger than I’ve ever worked with (I’m used to starting around eight). Each class has 6-8 kids and an Entre Amigos teacher, who works with them all day. The kids also get breakfast and lunch, and a dinner pack to take home to their families. The first class is the four-year-olds. I’m fascinated by Vicente’s teaching method. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. He’s Dalcrose-trained, but despite his little green book of over eighty self-composed children’s songs, most of what he does in class is in direct response to something the kids say or do. The class rolls out like a theme and variations: a melody becomes a dance, then a game with percussion, into musical hide-and-seek, all centred on the kids learning to identify different musical patterns — rhythms, melodies, cadences, timbres. I pretend to be a kid and learn along with them. I’m particularly impressed when Vicente revises a simple tune with the students, then sets out four chairs. I expect one kid per chair, but no! One child is selected to sit in the first chair, moving up one space each time Vicente plays the song’s next phrase. By the end of the exercise, Vicente can jumble up the order of phrases - one of which sounds very similar to the preceding phrase, being a descending sequence (same melody, starting a step lower) - and the kid is flying across the chairs, trying to get her bum on the right seat according to the musical patterns she is hearing. (Vicente is also the only person I’ve met who can play tin whistle with one hand and keyboard with the other, although Joseph later tells me the one-handed tin whistle is a Seville specialty.) Vicente gives me a look as we swap classes to the three-year-olds. Language barriers notwithstanding, we understand each other well enough for me to wish him luck. The class is entirely little boys; some seem troubled. One in particular is clingy, quiet and prone to tears, which the Entre Amigos teacher handles with love. In fact, all these young women show great joy and care in their work, tying up shoe laces, wiping snotty noses, and assisting without pause in the structured mayhem. Vicente teaches the small boys with sensitivity. In one exercise, he brings each child up to the keyboard, playing with them one-by-one to establish a tempo and rhythm. Then we all play together, trying to copy Vicente’s rhythms and dynamics, marked by dramatic changes in his endless supply of facial expressions. Vicente and I walk away confident that at least one message got through - the kids had a perfect grasp of ‘forte’ (loud)! Yet the moment that remained with me was Vicente taking out a tiny sopranino recorder and piping a brief tune, just a few seconds long, creating a moment of total quiet and focus among the normally rambunctious kids. The last class is the five-year-olds. We walk in to a poster declaring brightly, if a little unsteadily, ‘The music has arrived!’ Each child has contributed their name and a separate drawing, including one fetching study of Vicente entirely in green and red pencil. This class is immediately more focussed, the kids following the rhythm and dynamics of Vicente’s keyboard playing, before he moves on to a more complicated version of the chair exercise. This time, four different percussion instruments represent each phrase. Each child has a turn tapping out the tune’s rhythm on the four instruments, changing instruments each phrase. When one child struggles to remember which instrument to hit next, Vicente instructs us to assist by hiding the instruments behind our backs until it is their turn to be played, immediately involving both ‘soloist’ and ‘audience’. And the tiny kid’s face lighting up as instruments pop out from behind our backs for her to whack is worth the plane fare from Australia. Above all, the intense concentration and fascination a few of the kids show towards music deeply affects me. Even aged three, the rhythmic abilities and listening skills of some kids in each class show they are not just captivated, but capable. I don’t know anything about these kids, but I’ve worked across enough areas and countries to know that love of music and musical ability does not see class or situation - even if, in most circumstances, musical education depends on both those factors, often heavily. Where will all these capable, curious, but so very under-resourced kids end up? “It’s kind of like trying to build a plane in midair, but that’s the fun of it.” PROTESTRA Co-founder and board Chair Ian Vlahović says, negotiating a rice paper roll at a Vietnamese restaurant in New York City. Since he’s been involved in PROTESTRA with co-founder Michelle Rofrano from the beginning, I’ve asked him to tell me how it all began. “PROTESTRA was Michelle’s idea”, he says. “Michelle & I both used to be really active in social media, typing out long, righteously-justified rants about everything that goes on, and one day she just gave me a call, and was like, what if we just stopped creating these rants, and did something a little more tangible?” PROTESTRA’s first concert came soon after Trump’s first election, taking the form of a classical music benefit concert for immigration, as the Muslim ban was “big news”. The concert was organised in two weeks. “Would it be just crazy?”, Ian remembers them asking each other. “And the answer is yes, and it continues to be yes, but maybe it’s better to channel the rage than just shouting into the void, or the echo chamber. Music has the additional emotional impact that a social media rant doesn’t — it has more chance of shifting the dial.” He describes those two weeks as a “whirlwind”; he and Michelle spent pretty much eight hours every day at the same coffee shop (“they got to know us really well”), turning over the same problem. “We have literally zero dollars, and we’re not going to get more than zero dollars — and why would we? We’re not a non-profit, not an organisation, and that’s where this realisation [came] that a lot of musicians do care about this, and they are willing to donate their time.” When your cause galvanises people, it turns out ‘zero dollars’ might not be the barrier it seems. Michelle and Ian found an empathetic church willing to be their concert venue; several living composers donated their music, minus licensing fees. To build the orchestra, the pair relied heavily on fellow alumni, as both were recent graduates. And within two weeks, PROTESTRA’s first concert was held, with 50-60 orchestra members, and 150 people in the audience, raising about $3,000 for various NGOs. “It’s always been about finding like-minded people who have a resource to offer, whether it’s the space, or their time”, Ian says. That first concert didn’t cost anything, except time — “and probably a couple of hundred bucks each in coffee”. Busy and diverging schedules led to a break until 2020, but early that year, Ian recalls getting “another one of those phone calls”. Michelle had a gap in her dance card, and was aiming for a late spring/early summer outdoor concert focussed on climate change. And then — Covid. Like many arts organisations, PROTESTRA went virtual, but also used the time to start the organisation. The climate concert happened a year or so later, sparsely attended as people were still Covid-nervous. Protestra has held a number of concerts and satellite events since. Along with the fearlessness of their approach, PROTESTRA’s most impressive aspect is that it functions without any major donors or funding. On average, PROTESTRA concerts cost $20,000-25,000 each, which includes venue hire and also paying musicians an honorarium — the middle ground between volunteering (the standard charity benefit model) and paying full wage. “There are definitely more economical ways to be an activist than put on a classical music concert”, Ian jokes. Pretty much the entirety of this amount needs to be raised from donors; PROTESTRA doesn’t even count ticket sales as income when projecting a concert budget. And that $20,000-$25,000 dollars usually needs to be found before each concert is announced, although sometimes the team gets 60% of the way there and commits anyway, as they’ve discovered people are more likely to donate to a project which has momentum over one that’s just an idea. Ian says they often receive feedback that the orchestra looks really professional. While it’s gratifying, and helpful in terms of profile and communication, Ian also flags this perception as a possible disadvantage: a polished product can create assumptions that the orchestra’s well-funded. Yet in reality, everyone’s in it for the love. Like Michelle, Ian would love to run PROTESTRA full time — he says he’s has never had a job as meaningful. I point out how gutsy what PROTESTRA is doing looks — their first concert in 2025 was called the Presidential Transition Protest Concert. But the reality is, neither Ian, Michelle, nor their musicians feel able to remain as bystanders. “If you’ll pardon the profanity, I’ve always considered our subtitle, ‘musicians who give a f**k’, and it’s really heartening to see how many there are that do,” says Ian. The orchestra gets people asking to play “all the time”, offering their resumes and asking to audition. Again, there’s the perception of professionalism, but in reality all the PROTESTRA team needs is a couple of videos just to make sure candidates can “play the notes”. Ian notes that the younger generation is highly motivated in terms of activism. PROTESTRA membership skews towards musicians in their 20’s and 30’s, although the age range is from 18-70+. We discuss the changing nature of protest: that what used to be effective, isn’t. “When the rules go out the window, you gotta change up the strategy,” Ian says. “I don’t know exactly what that is, but we’re trying one way here… We’re trying to redefine what it means to be an activist and how you can be an activist — it’s not all about the frontline. We’re just trying to create those opportunities for people.” We’re both shocked to realise we’ve been in the restaurant for two hours. The time has vanished, along with the iced coffees, but I leave inspired by so much time in the company of this new breed of arts activist. It just goes to show that, when you stop shouting into the void and offer something honest and a bit brave instead, you might find it’s not the void you thought it was, after all.  Restaurant selfie - myself and Ian  The Foundation for Art & Healing wasn’t originally on my list of Churchill interviewees. But with some extra time in Boston, I came across the work of Dr Jeremy Nobel. Dr Nobel was unavailable, but Chris Doucette, the Foundation’s Executive Director, swiftly made some time for me. Their current focus is ‘Project Unlonely’, addressing loneliness and the myriad health issues that it causes, but I’m also curious about Dr Nobel’s earlier work in response to traumatic events such as Sandy Hook and the Boston Marathon.
Chris explains that Dr Nobel established the Foundation for Art and Healing twenty years ago, initially around investigating how the arts can help with trauma. Dr Nobel saw an exhibition of art by children memorialising September 11, from which he learned that seeing a traumatic experience on repeat, like footage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers, is different for adults and kids. While the adult brain can interpret the image as a single event, a child will interpret it almost as if it’s happening anew each time. Not only can art help kids cope with trauma, but, Dr Nobel learned, ‘the improvements in their emotions were democratised across race and class - a very compelling intervention for dealing with trauma’. Consequently, a focus on how art-making and creative expression can help people deal with trauma formed the Foundation’s early work. Dr Nobel worked with veterans experiencing PTSD, participated in creative arts-based support for natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy and developed guidance for parents to use in communicating with their children about the mass killing tragedy at Sandy Hook. However, the Foundation’s focus changed after a study which brought low income African American women with diabetes together, in order for them to deal with the trauma of having a chronic illness. After a six week art-making intervention, the study discovered that the main benefit this group of women experienced was, quite simply, connection. It also revealed the unexpected impact of loneliness on chronic health conditions. Finally, the study showed that addressing the loneliness associated with having a chronic health condition improves health outcomes, from the practical, such as medication adherence, to the emotional and psychological. Project UnLonely was born from this focus group, and the Foundation for Art and Healing has been ramping up investment in it ever since. A big part of Project UnLonely is designing and rolling out creative interventions. Every workshop has three main components: mindfulness, creative expression, and social and emotional learning. The mindfulness component is usually a simple breathing exercise, which allows people to begin by connecting with themselves. The creative exercise, which follows a simple prompt such as ‘remember something kind someone did for you’, can be in a variety of art forms, including drawing, poetry, or movement. Abstraction and simplicity is encouraged - lines, squiggles, dots, whatever. Chris is very clear that the Foundation is not teaching people how to do art: ‘we facilitate an art-making experience, just people expressing themselves. We have a phrase at the Foundation for Art & Healing - no Picassos!’ The final component is social and emotional learning. Once you’ve expressed yourself, you pair up and share your art. The whole process only takes an hour, and in every workshop, each person has a chance to create, to share, and to listen. I say that I see how an exercise like this might help someone feel a bit safer taking the next step of sharing with someone more qualified to help them through their issues. Chris agrees: ‘You can’t solve loneliness in one workshop. You can’t solve anyone’s emotional and mental challenges. But what we did find is that by participating in a workshop like this, we found a 50% increase in those participants joining something else - either on campus or outside the college or university. It helps inspire people to say, I joined this thing I didn’t know about, and I had a really great experience, and now I feel safe to go join something else, or seek out support somewhere else. So that’s a 50% increase in engagement with something else, which is exactly what we want, because the more we connect, the more we’re able to get our needs met.’ ‘Everyone can have a shared experience that feels safe and enjoyable, and yet expressive and authentic. It’s deceptively simple, and people really enjoy the chance to express themselves in that way.’ ‘Deceptively simple’ is actually critically important. Foundation projects use a public health model:
As the Foundation has such a strong public health background, I ask Chris how it confronts the issue of keeping clear boundaries between what art can and cannot do. Chris reframes the question: ‘How do you get involved without getting involved too deep, or deeper than the facilitator is qualified handle? How do we manage that? What we tell people is that number one, we are not a research institution. We are not doing “capital R” Research. Number two, our programs are not therapy, and they’re not promoted as therapy. Number three, we refer to our programs as experiential - more like “emotional stabilisation workshops”. We’re asking people to feel their feelings and express them, but with prompts that really limit the depths to which they reveal themselves.’ He gives an example of a prompt they wouldn’t use: ‘what is the one thing you wish you were forgiven for?’ It’s a deep question which can easily bring people to a traumatic space. Instead, the Foundation limits prompts so that people have a safe space to express themselves, but are unlikely to go beyond what a facilitator can handle. The Foundation’s emphasis on public health has got me thinking. One of my first steps is likely to be creating an advisory council of trusted collaborators, moving to a more formal board structure at a later point. I hadn’t thought about having a public health representative in either group, but maybe I should, to make sure we’re aligning with best practice in mental health, and not overstepping our boundaries as an arts organisation. I point out to Chris that artists don’t always think about safety. ‘Good for artists!,’ he responds. ‘They can be reckless and break boundaries, and we learn from that.’ Yet he still thinks there may well be value in having someone involved in my project who can consider it from a public health perspective. He points out it’s very easy to create a project that will help a small group of people. Spending a million dollars on fifty people is highly likely to get great results, but it may not scale. Using a public health model ensures Foundation projects can be replicated, which Chris considers key: ‘I think that if we want to make change in this world, we have to make it reach as many people as possible.’ The elephant in the room is, of course, that classical music isn’t very scaleable. Chris says part of the Foundation’s philosophy is not teaching “Capital-A Art” for that very reason. ‘You can’t learn to play a violin in sixty minutes. But what you can do in sixty minutes is hum. What you can do is get everyone to hum together.’ And he gives an example of doing exactly this at the Foundation’s recent twentieth anniversary event. Chris says it felt ‘ethereal’ and ‘was such a connecting and warm experience. Sure a violin is more sophisticated, but that moment gave everyone what they needed in just a brief period of time.’ Still, there is also value in simply observing art. ‘If you engage in creative expression, it helps improve your mental and physical health, and it helps you reduce loneliness and foster connection, but observing art can also make you feel less lonely and improve your mental health and well-being. You need to do more than just observe art, but observing art does have its place and its role in public health.’ I finish by asking Chris if there’s a particular aspect of the Foundation’s work that he’d like to share with Australians. He recommends Dr Nobel’s recent book, Project UnLonely: Healing our Crisis of Disconnection, describing it as the playbook on the connection between loneliness, art-making and the brain, and how creative expression is uniquely suited to combating loneliness. He also suggests this three minute video summary to whet your appetite. It’s been an energising and thought-provoking discussion. Chris sends me plenty of follow-up material, linked below. ‘No Picassos’ rule notwithstanding, the Foundation has curated some pretty great art in Project UnLonely’s name: a series of free short films. If you’re looking for somewhere to start, try The Artisan. See if it makes you cry, too. Project UnLonely Films 150 short films on loneliness and connection https://www.artandhealing.org/puf-get-access/ (yes - you have to sign in, but they don’t spam you) Podcast with Dr Jeremy Nobel: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finding-connection-through-creativity-with-dr-jeremy/id1772701967?i=1000673164674 Try out some of the creative exercises for yourself at The Creativity Hub With thanks to Chris Doucette & Dr Jeremy Nobel for their feedback Karin Goodfellow may have the best job title around. For many years, I’ve thought the coolest thing to have on your business card would be ‘Ravenmaster’ (an official position, thanks to the Tower of London). But ‘Director of Transformative Art & Monuments’ might knock it from top spot. Even better, Karin came up with it herself. Previously the Director of Public Art at Boston City Hall (a position she also still holds), Karin created the new role to allow her to focus on establishing a ‘more socially responsive, energetic approach to public art through a participatory project’. After public discussions around monument removal in Boston from 2017 onwards, Karin felt there was both a public desire, and a need, for art that is more responsive to current social dialogue, as well as for more experimental art. The invitation to apply for a Mellon Foundation grant became the multi-year Un-Monument | De-Monument | Re-Monument: Transforming Boston project, commissioning temporary monuments for the city, along with satellite community events, such as conversations on the Common. Mel and I have already visited one of these art works. Arriving in Boston with a free Sunday, I combine my love of art with my love of plants, and sniff out Kate Farrington’s Future Monument to the Trees of the Boston Public Garden. An online map tours you through the garden’s grounds, pausing at certain trees to listen to audio of a poem or story written by community members. I find the peace of the public garden, coupled with these often personal reflections, both moving and restorative. I’m new to Boston but it already seems to me to be a city well-supplied with public art. Karin’s surprised to hear me say this - she wants to do much more - but I’m hard pressed to think of a public building in Australia that has at least five distinct galleries in it, like Boston City Hall. Mel and I have toured them all before my meeting; they run the gamut of everything from a photographic gallery by school students to a vivid and sophisticated solo exhibition. Karin works in the Mayor’s Office of Art and Culture, signalling the current Mayor’s vision and commitment to the arts. Arts investment in Boston wasn’t always as significant as it has become, she tells me. About ten years ago, political change coincided with public demand for more art, led by groups of artists who mobilised to make representations to various candidates. In addition to the political will available, Karin’s programs have had some success with grants, allowing them to fund pilots of programs which can later be successfully rolled out. Karin is visionary, but also practical. ‘Depending on the program,’ she says, ‘I think a lot of it seems very straightforward, why it’s worthwhile right now. In the public art program, we have a series of murals at public schools. I think that seems very straightforward to people, why colourful murals at schools across the city is a positive experience for the neighbours and school communities.’ I point out that it wouldn’t be straightforward everywhere in Australia, where the distinction between street art and graffiti isn’t always understood. Karin says that doesn’t sound unfamiliar to her, but there’s been a lot of growth in the past ten years. That gives me hope. The real reason I asked to speak with Karin, however, was the city’s Artist in Residence (AIR) program. The website describes it as follows: ‘In the program, we bring together artists and City employees that share deep investments in community and social justice. The artists bring artistic expertise and experience with creative approaches. Our City partners provide subject matter expertise and experience with existing City systems. Artists learn more about government, while City departments learn about creative problem solving. They co-design projects that test new approaches to City policies and processes. They explore how City initiatives impact the experience of all Bostonians. Projects are often responsive to the social and political context of that year.’ Neither Karin nor I are aware of a program similar, in a city hall or other civic department. Karin explains there have been five iterations of AIR; it’s currently on pause but she’s hoping to re-launch it soon. Usually the process begins with a call out to City Hall departments for staff members who might want to be involved, and finding out subjects they’d be willing to work on and devote staff time to. A call-out to artists follows, then the artist and City Hall staff member work together to co-design a project around the issues City Hall has identified. Sometimes other community members can be introduced to a project, but as Karin points out, both artists and City Hall staff are also community members, so there’s always a community perspective in each project from the start. Bringing in other forms of community engagement works best if artists or City Hall staff can capitalise on existing relationships that either the artist or the staff member have, rather than trying to forge a new relationship once the project is running. One exception to this was artist Karen Young and her Taiko drumming project. She worked with ‘Older and Bolder’, a women’s group from a local community centre. While Karen’s relationship with the group was new and she worked hard to develop it, the women already had relationships with each other and with people at the community centre where they met. During their work together, it emerged the women had concerns around a dangerous crosswalk, and worked with Karen and the City’s transport department to create an event that drew attention to the issue. ‘The thinking, at least for myself, as it evolved, has really been that there are community members who want to do this utilitarian work,’ Karin explains. ‘They’re already interested in using their work to achieve a purpose. People who work in City Hall, who are running things here, many have really good intentions and want to improve their community. They want creative solutions; they may not be able to come up with them or implement them themselves all the time, but they have knowledge of the systems within here. Then I’d be out in the arts community and see exhibitions about the work that we’re doing at City Hall, but there’s no connection. So the hope was really that there are artists who wanted to be activists, and those are the ones who are good for the program.’ After five years and many successes, it’s not surprising that Karin has identified a few areas for improvement. She’s proud of the ‘very interesting projects and propositions’ they’ve come up with, but feels the next phase of the program is for projects to have a long-term impact on policy. I ask what it’d take for this to happen, expecting a conversation about bureaucratic red tape, but Karin’s answer is ‘capacity’. As with all artistic projects, every project requires extra personal attention, which makes it harder to spend time thinking through whatever the next steps might be. Not all projects thrive, but not all will, as they’re experiments, Karin says - but of the ones that do, she’d like to see their impact reach further. This leads to the question of supporting artists and City Hall members in their work, particularly if they’re in direct contact with community members and community stories. Karin points out that artists bring their own assumptions to the work, including the idea that City Hall can be impersonal, but, she says, ‘it’s still just other people’, who may be equally unqualified to deal with difficult situations and subjects. ‘The city itself is not an endless bucket of skill-sets and capacity, that I think sometimes externally people want it to be,’ Karin says. It’s a good point, and perhaps one of the outcomes of the AIR program is to challenge generalisations about ‘the City’ and its capacity. And just as the City has limits, so do artists, especially when they meet or work with community members who’ve experienced trauma. ‘Artists need to understand they can’t fix things,’ says Karin. ‘They need to be able to have that clarity, and offer that clarity to other people, and the same is true of City staff.’ And while it might be possible to consider hiring appropriate staff to consult or help on these issues, Karin points out that providing emotional support is not what the AIR program is there to do. Negotiating between people’s (including artists’) expectations of what the City can and can’t achieve sounds to me like a big part of the work. Ultimately the Boston City Hall AIR program, with its wealth of new art and creative civic solutions, has several benefits beyond the well-known emotional and psychological benefits of participating in the arts. It helps residents of the City understand City Hall better. It helps City Hall staff develop creative solutions to local problems and connect more deeply with residents. But post-program evaluations show another surprising outcome: community participants in the AIR program felt better able to advocate for themselves, either individually or as a group. Not just because of increased contact with and understanding of City Hall, but because of increased confidence brought about through their artistic collaborations. It’s yet more evidence that the arts works in surprising ways, especially if it’s not siloed. It’s certainly infiltrating Boston City. One final question for Karin is about her current major project, Un-Monument. Why are all these commissions only temporary monuments? After half an hour in Karin’s company, I’m unsurprised by the very practical answer - it’s a great way to see what works and what doesn’t, and also much easier to get permissions for temporary monuments than permanent ones. There’s a good chance some artworks will have a life beyond Un-Monument, by which point they’ll already be tried, tested and beloved.  Karin Goodfellow and I enjoy the Boston city skyline from Boston City Hall After two weeks of big ideas at Santa Fe Opera, the willingness of Allison Drovairos, Executive Director of the Refugee Orchestra Project, to get into nitty-gritty operational detail is a welcome change. Big ideas can be inspiring, but the main outcome I’m seeking from my Churchill Fellowship is to find examples of sustainable operational models for my own project. I already know it’s possible; I want it to be possible for the next twenty years and beyond.
Boston-based, the Refugee Orchestra Project was founded by conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya as a way to use music to highlight the vital and diverse roles refugees play in American society. I met Lidiya at the Hart Institute for Women Conductors at the Dallas Opera, and again in Sydney 2024, when she made her Opera Australia debut. On a pouring wet Sydney day, we sloshed our way to a cafe to discuss the founding of the orchestra, its history and its evolution. Now, in my conversation with the very focussed, articulate and practical Allison, several key themes emerge: again, the idea of excellence carrying the message; the experience and expertise of the conductor being key to retaining performers; operational and artistic staff working for a combination of love and money; and the likelihood of the founder working pro bono and at times supporting the project with personal funds, especially in its early stages. Allison came to the orchestra with a background in non-profits. After singing in a Boston performance, she stayed on, initially helping source donations of food for post-concert receptions, then assisting with finance, and, finally, stepping into the Executive Director position. Allison’s father and his family are all Russian immigrants, so she felt drawn to the Refugee Orchestra Project, saying she ‘always had a strong pull towards Lidiya and the work that she’s doing’. ‘I’ve always had something in my private life that I feel helps to give back - that’s just been a really important part of my life, so when this organisation was created, and I had really good friends that were a part of it, and I loved the mission, I just felt “why not? Let’s put another thing on my plate.”’ The Refugee Orchestra Project operates largely on what Allison calls a ‘gig model’: organisations who would like the orchestra to perform at an event complete a google form or send an email; the orchestra then reserves the dates, negotiates on budget, and signs a contract. The negotiated fee must cover all administration related to the project, the musicians’ performance fees and any travel, any public relations required, music rental fees, rehearsal venues, and all other on-costs. While this results in each performance being fully covered, it doesn’t leave much for extra revenue. This means Allison and the other operational staff currently aren’t covered for any administrative work required between gigs. At one point Allison received a stipend, funded by Lidiya herself, but right now, everyone’s agreed the gig model makes the most sense. Fortunately, Allison says, there’s a lot of interest. While the operational side of the Refugee Orchestra Project started out with volunteers, and Lidiya still donates her time, the musicians have always been paid (and well, Allison points out, considering the orchestra’s resources). One benefit of engaging professional musicians is that the orchestra can condense rehearsal time - one to three rehearsals per gig, depending on the repertoire. It’s often more practical to choose repertoire the performers already know; the fact that Lidiya can draw on her own extensive professional network to find players helps with this kind of knowledge. When the orchestra’s been engaged in cities where it doesn’t have pre-existing networks, or has gaps to fill, Lidiya finds a trusted colleague to recommend players. Now they’re more well-known, the Refugee Orchestra Project has musicians reach out to them and ask to play next time the ensemble is in their area. It’s not a requirement for performers to have a refugee background, but Allison thinks that around ninety-five per cent are either refugees themselves or children of refugees. ‘I’ve found personally that people aren’t reaching out to us to perform with our orchestra unless they feel really compelled to support the mission of the organisation,’ she says. I ask her about the Refugee Orchestra Project’s board composition, which I find very interesting; they mostly appear either to be artists themselves, or to work in the creative industries. It’s a different mix to the usual combination of legal, financial and corporate folk we often see on arts boards in Australia. Allison agrees it’s different to most boards in the USA as well. The Refugee Project Orchestra board acts mostly as an advisory board; they may move to a more formal governance structure in the future but haven’t had the need so far. It was largely formed through Lidiya’s industry contacts. For example, Beth Stewart is Yankovskaya’s PR manager, and has been instrumental in securing excellent media coverage for the orchestra. Olga Lisovskaya, a Bostonian, has worked with a number of different opera companies, and has close connections with local Russian and Ukrainian groups, bringing a lot of insight into relevant areas. Great PR coverage and high quality projects have made the ‘gig model’ highly successful; the orchestra has a busy dance card. However, the model does have its downsides: there’s less ability to focus on securing philanthropic support while gig requests keeps rolling in. And Allison says grants are difficult to secure. Funding bodies approve of the orchestra’s mission, but, as in Australia, prefer to fund ongoing programs instead of one-off projects. Ironically, the Refugee Orchestra Project’s success in receiving invitations to perform across the USA and abroad is a another problem for local funding bodies, where demonstrating ties to the local community is critical. The orchestra is now refocusing to bolster its connections to Boston and outlying communities. Finally, now that the orchestra holds 501C3 status and is able to fundraise in its own right, it must take care not to be perceived as engaging in political activity. While Yankovskaya might be free to make her own comments on personal social media channels, the orchestra is not; nor can it participate in fundraising events connected with political figures. Nevertheless, the Refugee Orchestra Project can still make an impact. Allison gives examples of performances given in collaboration with organisations seeking to highlight their own work on particular issues of social justice or human rights. Consider the difference between inviting a public speaker to amplify your message, and inviting a symphony orchestra. As Allison points out, there’s nothing like the visuals - not to mention the emotional impact - of a symphony orchestra to make your event or your message stand out. The Refugee Orchestra Project is heading towards its tenth year, and it, like the Pueblo Opera Program, is facing the question of ‘what next?’. One thing’s for sure: the issues that provoked its creation don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.  My second-last day at Santa Fe Opera, and Charles Gamble, Director of Community Engagement, pings into my inbox with this: ‘Hey Sarah! I just received a call from Dominik Morningdove, an Indigenous composer who also happens to usher here at the SFO. He was hoping to connect with you. I think Oliver Prezant might have talked to him about your work and fellowship. I've only met Dominik once and don't know anything about his work or focus, but Oliver thinks highly of him. If you have time to call Dominik, his number is …’ So I call. Dominik recovers from his surprise long enough to organise coffee with me the next day, before his ushering shift at the Santa Fe Opera. Dominik is with his partner Violet, who must be the only Australian working at the Santa Fe Opera. I met Violet briefly when she was ushering at the Pueblo Opera Program Youth Night; the torrential rain made conversation difficult, but I recognised her accent. Violet’s passion is design. She’d love to work in film, but for now the opera is a pretty good gig.
It’s a good gig for Dominik for now, too. He is from San Felipe Pueblo, one of the southern Pueblo nations that are part of the Pueblo Opera Program, but not yet represented on the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council. In his mid-twenties now, he grew up without knowing anything much about opera. One day in 2017, when he was about sixteen, his grandmother called him up and said, ‘We’re going to the opera!’ This was Dominik’s first encounter with the art form. That performance of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus changed the course of his life. Although always interested in music, from that first trip to Santa Fe Opera, he began to consider opera as an art form he could work in. Dominik says the experience pushed him towards going to college to study voice. He was accepted into a Bachelor’s degree at Fort Lewis College, which has a Native American tuition waiver. Even with the waiver, he estimates his six years of college still cost him about $6,000 a year in food and board, and remembers his first year, when required to live in college, as especially tough. Without the tuition waiver provided by colleges like Fort Lewis, many Native Americans like Dominik couldn’t attend university at all. Even with the waiver, there are still problems - not just the potentially unmanageable cost of living expenses, but also the limited degree choices. As Dominik said, his Bachelors degree was in Voice. But what he really wanted to do was compose, which wasn’t on offer as a major at Fort Lewis, the only college he could afford. Nevertheless, his time at Fort Lewis gave him a range of complementary skills, including two years of conducting courses, the exams for which involved conducting the choir and orchestra in concert. He describes himself as playing cello to intermediate level, some piano, basic brass, and guitar, as well as his college degree in voice. Dominik’s composition experience predates his college education. He recalls that, around the time of the 2018 Doctor Atomic production, Santa Fe Opera sent teaching artists to Santa Fe Indian School. Dominik was one of four students who contributed music around a particular theme; Dominik remembers his was about radioactive waste on the wind. All four students performed their work at the Lensic Performing Arts Centre in Santa Fe. Dominik also worked with composer Raven Chacon for Site Santa Fe, creating graphic notation for a string quartet. His work was professionally recorded and hosted at Site Santa Fe, both score and recording with headphones for public listening. Now, he’s been out of college two years. He started writing for orchestra while at college, and since then, he’s been paying someone to look over his scores, whenever he can afford it. There don’t seem to be any other viable training opportunities for him, so he’s trying to support himself. Dominik’s dream is to write an opera in his Native Keres language. He says his generation completely missed learning their language, so he’s now passionate about language reclamation and preservation. It’s not easy. Dominik describes San Felipe Pueblo as being particularly conservative. There’s a strong resistance to language being written down. In fact, unless it’s for your own private use, it’s forbidden, and Keresan is definitely not to be shared publicly. Dominik risks retribution - most likely ostracisation - from his tribe if he were to publish or perform such an opera. For him, though, the risk feels worth it. ‘I feel like opera would be one of the perfect avenues [for language reclamation] because the culture’s not just spoken - it’s in the things we wear, the way we greet and speak to each other… opera is the perfect avenue to incorporate everything it is to be Native American.’ Dominik is deeply passionate about opera, and full of ideas. He tells me about performing in a production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, and how he loved the director’s choices to avoid dead time on stage; there were no black-outs or blue-outs, and the audience was in the moment the entire time. He compared this to seeing La Traviata at Santa Fe Opera, where the whole set moved on a turntable. None of the ‘machinery’ was visible, nor were the stage hands; there was nothing to take the viewer out of the moment, or the place. This fully immersive potential of opera thrills Dominik. He’s keen to write his own libretto, as it’s important to him to conceive everything about his opera’s construction, so it has flow. He also sees characterisation as paramount: he’s currently creating musical sketches for characters from Kafka’s Metamorphosis, as a precursor to drafting an opera. Part of his interest in opera is also as a way to platform Native American culture beyond featuring in textbooks of historical battles. ‘We generally don’t get put in textbooks unless it’s who conquered who’, he says. Opera - because of its complexity, its multidisciplinary richness, and its prestige - seems to him to be the best way to showcase what his culture has to offer. I ask Dominik, if he could wave a magic wand and change one aspect of the Pueblo Opera Program, what would he change? He points out that it’s very hard to galvanise people in a particular Pueblo if the Governor isn’t into it. A lot of things are word-of-mouth and if you don’t talk to the right person, you might not hear about something. Like Renee Roybal from the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council, he recommends speaking to as many people in person as possible, as well as physical collateral - fliers. ‘Spread it to the edges’, he says. Public noticeboards in the middle of a Pueblo won’t necessarily reach everyone, so it’s important to create multiple places where information is available. Ideally, he’d also love to see marketing material in both English and the local language (which is tricky if you’re not supposed to write it down). And finally, always go to the schools, especially elementary schools. Bring singers if possible, who can sing an excerpt, so kids understand what they’re going to see. This is something Santa Fe Opera actively does, but finding ways to increase their reach over time sounds like a good next step. Finally, I ask what Dominik what he needs. He’s hamstrung by not knowing exactly who to talk to, in order to get his works on stage. It’s clear he needs a pathway, first for his own artistic development, and then for career progression. I have some ideas for him, including offering to review his work. But this highly articulate, passionate and determined young creative really needs local pathways if he’s going to realise his dream of telling his own people’s story. I feel strongly that it was serendipity that connected me with Dominik as my last meeting after two weeks at Santa Fe Opera (that, and Oliver Prezant and Charles Gamble). Here is a young Pueblo person, product of the Pueblo Opera Program, who has fallen passionately in love with the art form and dedicated his life to it ever since. It’s clear that, in terms of creating engagement, the Pueblo Opera Program is working. But there are also gaps. Some of these are being filled: there are opportunities for young singers in the Young Voices program, and for technical crew in the Apprentices program. But there’s nothing for Dominik. Yet. Whether or not he ever writes a Native American opera, his example raises awareness of the barriers still in place. Is the Santa Fe Opera responsible for creating pathways for every single individual who expresses interest? I don’t believe so. There are always individual situations that exceed the capacity of any organisation to solve. But if part of the question for the Pueblo Opera Program is ‘what could be next’, then perhaps creating pathways for all the different kinds of Pueblo youth who fall for the opera, to be able to try their hand at finding a home in it, is one answer. Because then the answer to ‘what could be next’ isn’t just about the Santa Fe Opera. Nor is it just about the Pueblo Opera Program. It’s about the future of the young people in the surrounding Pueblos - their capacity to become creatives, to become leaders, to shake the ground under our art form’s feet, and to hand it on to future generations, side by side with those of us who offer over four hundred years of operatic heritage to these far older peoples and lands.  Sarah & Michelle You pronounce the name, ‘PRO-testra’ (as in, protest + orchestra. Just so we’re clear).
I found them while researching my Churchill Fellowship application. Type ‘orchestra’ and ‘socially-engaged’ into your search engine and not much comes up, except these guys. Their feisty figurehead is New Jersey-based conductor Michelle Rofrano, who just happens to be on staff at Santa Fe Opera covering Maestro Gemma New for Britten’s Turn of the Screw. We meet up at Tesuque Village Market, a short hop from the opera and therefore a popular hang for the artists - also perilously close to our Air BnB. There are several apprentices having pizza at the next table when Michelle arrives. I start by asking her what she’d most like Australians to know about Protestra. She says it’s an activist orchestra with regular concerts trying to educate audiences about issues of social justice, made up of musicians who donate their time and talents performing and organising, and who believe we have a responsibility to use art to make a statement. We unpack the question of musicians donating their time and talents more. I’m particularly interested because the projects I’ve run in Sydney at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse are voluntary; I like giving my time and so do the other musicians who join in. But I’ve also received pushback from colleagues who believe an artist should never ask other artists to work for free; that we have such a hard time making a case for proper pay to the wider community that setting up a volunteer orchestra is doing everyone a disservice. Michelle says Protestra’s first concert was entirely voluntary, but now they pay a small honorarium. The 2017 #NoBan concert, Protestra’s inaugural event and a response to the first Trump administration’s Muslim ban, came together in two weeks as an alternative to the ‘shouting into the void’ of social media. Since then, the orchestra has been grassroots funded, including for payment of a lump sum honorarium for musicians in acknowledgment of small costs incurred like parking or meals, or having to miss some teaching. Nevertheless, the honorarium is way below what professional musicians would expect to be paid. Michelle says that all musicians receive information about the honorarium up front, along with details of repertoire, dates, and other logistical details. They are also offered the option to donate their fee directly to the concert’s chosen charity in the musician’s own name. Michelle says about half of all Protestra musicians each concert donate their fee. Beyond that, the orchestra is covered almost entirely by fundraising; any fundraising monies and ticket sales in excess of their budget are donated to the concert’s charity partner. Michelle thinks the honorarium, however small, goes some way towards acknowledging the orchestra is aware that players’ participation in a concert comes at a cost. She also points out that the organisers all donate their time, Michelle included. But at the end of the day, it’s not about money. People come because they have a chance to play great repertoire (Mahler 5, anyone?) that’s a refreshing change after subbing on Broadway, often in chairs they wouldn’t normally play in their professional lives. Protestra works hard to create a collaborative, accepting environment; orchestra members can pitch causes for future concerts. And that’s often what’s most important: ‘People are just excited to play, and to use art to care about a real cause in the world, whereas a lot of times it’s like, for some reason, classical music and the real world seem separate,’ Michelle says. I ask if the Protestra team auditions or vets players. So far, there’s been no real need, although they might review a video of someone they don’t know. It’s a self-selecting organisation; people ask to play because they support the premise. Michelle says of her musicians and volunteer organisers, ‘It does go back to human rights. If you fundamentally believe all people deserve to be treated with respect, deserve autonomy, and to create a life for themselves where they’re happy and they’re respected and fulfilled - and you look at the world and the systems that prevent so many people from doing that, then it’s like, okay, we’re fighting those systems and we should all fight them together! If you believe that, then come on down, and hopefully we’ll see eye to eye on the big things.’ Protestra is currently project-based (although Michelle is open to having it as her full time job, if anyone wants to fund an orchestra?). The season is largely based around responding to current events, and everyone’s availability, especially Michelle’s. ‘Would I love to spend all of my time responding to everything, every single day? Yes. Can I? No. And it also benefits Protestra if I get to work other places too. I’m a better musician and I get to know more people.’ This also means they fundraise concert to concert. As Michelle points out, classical music is really expensive. There’s pretty much no government funding in the USA, so Protestra is funded almost entirely by grassroots donations from donors who believe in what they do. The occasional matched grant of $2,000 is a significant amount for them. While this model means no single sponsor controls their messaging, leaving them completely free to work that out for themselves, available funds limit what the orchestra can do. Michelle is torn about what would happen if they did get a big donor who wanted to control some of their messaging. We’re speaking on the same day that, back in Australia, the board of Creative Australia has just reversed its politically-prompted decision to drop Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino from the Venice Biennale. While the situation in 2025 USA is even more fraught than in 2025 Australia, artists in both communities face loss of funding if their work attracts criticism from government, or, in Australia’s case, if they choose to refuse funding offered to them by corporations to whom they have a moral opposition. To my mind, Protestra is making some pretty brave decisions in their programming, even if they don’t yet have corporate or government funding to lose. It’s an animated conversation, and somehow we end up spilling the corn chips all over the table. Should we we eat them anyway? Michelle jokes that with her Italian heritage, perhaps because they’re salty we should throw them over our left shoulder. The beagle at the next table looks hopeful, but ultimately loses out. The chips get eaten as we talk about how Protestra chooses its concert themes. ‘We don’t shy away from issues even if they don’t directly affect us,’ says Michelle, ‘because I think it’s important for all of us to care about issues of human rights. We all should care, because that’s how you fix it.’ And if you don’t shy away from difficult issues, then you really need to think carefully about your messaging. Protestra’s goal of raising awareness and funds to improve human rights isn’t always a straightforward proposition in the twenty-first century, especially not for a group that wants to be both outspoken and inclusive. Michelle says that for each concert, they have a lot of eyes on all the messaging, to make sure they’re capturing genuine perspectives. The Mahler 5 concert to raise funds for victims of war on Gaza is a key example. The team spent several weeks workshopping how to make the messaging strong enough to highlight the humanitarian crisis, without appearing to be apportioning blame. ‘Before we launch every concert, we joke about the “V” word - verbiage,’ says Michelle. ‘We’re like, we’re workshopping the verbiage for this concert. And we’re exhausted by the time we announce every concert, because it really goes through so many rounds of editing, especially our team members who might be more personally connected to the issue.’ Aware that learning about the issue is not the same as lived experience, the Protestra team always tries to get multiple people’s perspectives. And when they get negative feedback about their messaging, they treat it as a learning experience on how better to focus future messages for that person or group. We finish by discussing the inevitable experience of burnout. We all laugh in recognition when it comes up, but it’s a rueful laugh. Yes, it happens to Michelle - by the time each concert ends, she usually needs a break. But whenever there’s space on her dance card, there’ll be another concert. ‘I want to believe that me, speaking up for an issue I care about, and you, and the musicians in the orchestra, will have some kind of ripple effect, even if it just gives someone else courage and they’re the ones who have a bigger effect. I want to believe it matters. Because if we don’t try, then nothing will get better.’ It’s not so much data - it’s a true history. And my history with the program dates back to 1993.’ Andrea Fellows Fineberg is responding to my reason for being here at Santa Fe: that fifty years of the Pueblo Opera Program is a lot of data on First Nations engagement with classical music. We’re sitting in a cafe that wouldn’t look out of place transported to Brunswick, Melbourne, or Alexandria, Sydney, a bit different from the hummingbirds-and-clematis vibe of the Santa Fe Opera cantina. Andrea essentially created the role of Director of Engagement at the Santa Fe Opera; before her, most community engagement projects were run by the Guilds, chapters of Santa Fe Opera volunteers located in neighbouring communities. Since the 1970s, the Pueblo Opera Program ran largely as free opera tickets for Pueblo youth, managed by volunteers, and with Connie Tsosie Gaussoin as liaison to all the Pueblos and tribal councils. When Connie stepped down, an Advisory Council began, via an open call-out to Pueblo Opera program volunteers. At this point the relationship began to be more reciprocal, with Santa Fe Opera asking for input from the Advisory Council, and both sides working to develop more of a sense of community outside the opera season. ‘Part of what I always liked about the Pueblo Opera Program is that it’s a reciprocal relationship of hospitality and culture,’ says Andrea. ‘Hospitality is critical - we’re inviting people to our house - what does that mean? You take care of them, make them feel welcome.’ It’s a good way of thinking about inviting newcomers to classical music: not just as inviting people to witness an art form, but as guests being welcomed into your space. Inviting guests to your home becomes a pretty sterile affair if they don’t know how to be themselves around you, whether they’re allowed to help in your kitchen, if they have to take off their shoes - that kind of thing. As a first step in hospitality, the Santa Fe Opera started to provide dinners at Pueblo Opera Program Youth Nights, in part as a gesture of welcome, but also to acknowledge the size of commitment it was for some Pueblo folk to attend, especially from further locations. A couple of hours’ bus travel each way, plus a four-hour-opera, with no opportunity to eat, is not for the opera-ambivalent. Andrea is frank in admitting she doesn’t feel the Santa Fe Opera has always been 100% successful in terms of accessibility and providing a welcome to members of New Mexico’s sovereign nations. I ask what she thinks has worked, and, like Marita, she points to the importance of having people in leadership positions accept invitations to Pueblo feast days as part of the reciprocal relationship, instead of as ‘cultural tourism’. How do you make sure you’re not being a cultural tourist?, I ask. Andrea says to stay curious. She says it’s also important to teach cultural competency in your organisation, led by people from the relevant culture(s). And then, before you invite newcomers in, do your own check - what is the space you’re inviting people into? What did you need when you first went into that space yourself? What would have helped you? And, of course, ‘I believe in care and feeding,’ says Andrea. Not just water and food, but also considering practical accommodations like taking breaks at relevant times for people who may not be familiar with the experience, or, if they’re performing with you, the work. At the same time, she says, it’s still important to establish the conventions of the art form. Respect for the project is really important, as are boundaries and expectations. Yet again in Santa Fe Opera stories, Andrea points to the 2018 production of Doctor Atomic as clarifying much of this. Even thinking about it in the hectic atmosphere of the cafe, Andrea says: ‘I have chills. It was one of the most meaningful experiences I’ve ever had in my life. Walking across campus with [director] Peter Sellars is one of the most meaningful experiences you’re going to have in your life. But to work that closely with him, and to watch him work with the Pueblo communities and the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium from the Trinity site, was a masterclass in being human.’ She talks about the different understandings of time between the Pueblo communities and the opera. For Pueblo people, the timing of a performance such as a corn dance is dependent on many things. A watch isn’t one of them. For Doctor Atomic, Peter emphasised that being on time is essential to everyone coming together as a community - that we can’t create a moment in time unless we all agree that time matters. A key part in ensuring that agreement worked was giving the Pueblo performers adequate time to arrive and prepare themselves for the work they were about to do. There were other practicalities around inviting non-opera folk to be part of the opera, and making them feel welcome. Much of it seems simple, but anyone who’s ever worked backstage will be able to think of environments where some of these requirements would need a little extra boost. Andrea’s advice extends beyond feeding performers properly. Make sure they have somewhere to sit or to rest. Sofas are better than chairs; for an all-ages community engagement project, a plastic chair for three hours won’t suit everyone. Provide backstage monitors so your performers actually get to see the show. Be responsive to what you hear around the traps, whether or not it’s your responsibility, and make sure there are avenues for feedback. Don’t make assumptions - and, importantly, this includes not micro-managing, worrying too much, or treating people too gingerly. Finally, Andrea says, ‘It’s also not being “done”. Not thinking everything’s set. And also accepting not everything’s going to be perfect.’ Andrea recalls being as surprised as I was as to the extent of support the Pueblo Opera Program has found among the Pueblo communities. For a number of Pueblo folk, it’s the chance to experience a Western European tradition in the place they live; they don’t have to travel far to learn about other people’s culture, and to share in its performance at a high level. Andrea points out that there have also always been people in tribal leadership who question the opera’s motives, and the assumption that going to the opera is just what you do as Pueblo youth. Like all communities, each Pueblo has its own diversity of opinion and working to engage with them all is part of the opera’s ongoing responsibility. ‘I’ve been asked, “how do we get a Pueblo Opera Program?”’ Andrea says. ‘Like really, people have asked that clumsy of a question, and I generally have responded by saying that the Pueblo Opera Program is such a misnomer. It’s really the Pueblo Opera Relationship. That’s where the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council has helped shift people’s understanding, because we can refer to the tenets and principals of the Council by way of explaining what does it mean to have a relationship with sovereign nations on land that was stolen? So that now is really the core of the relationship - that it’s Pueblo-driven, not opera driven.”  Mesas at sunset, viewed from the Santa Fe Opera. |
AuthorWhen I was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to travel overseas and study socially-engaged orchestral and operatic models in September 2024, the trip seemed a lifetime away. Now, in June-August 2025, it’s here. Archives
January 2026
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