Open Text Card on Screen:
Metropolitan Youth Orchestra (MYO)
Serving Our Communities Through the Coronavirus
Image on Screen:
Collage of kids playing instruments; images of young adults playing instruments;
Text on Screen: MYO’s retention rate has been above 90% in the last four years
Metropolitan Youth Orchestra is a youth and family development program of the Indianapolis Symphony.
And we use music as the vehicle to teach life skills, college-readiness, kids just do better in school when they have arts in their lives.
On Screen: Krystal Ford
Lower Third:
Krystal Ford, Director, Metropolitan Youth Orchestra
They also grow up to become the next generation of arts patrons, concert goers, donors, and arts advocates.
Image on Screen: Young girls with their dad holding violins;
woman talking with young boy holding his violin,
man and young girl; mother and daughter holding instruments
One of the things that makes MYO special is we try to remove the financial barriers for all of our families. So we charge very low tuition, or provide scholarships.
Text on screen:
220 families from diverse backgrounds participated in the 2019-2020 program
It really brings diverse families together
Whether that's racially, socioeconomically
even though we are not a diversity initiative, we achieve this very naturally.
On Screen: Krystal Ford
The effects of the coronavirus really revealed some inequities in our community.
So it makes a big difference with access, and in terms of education and resources.
Image on Screen: Video collage of kids playing instruments remotely; images of young adults playing instruments;
A lot of our teachers lost the majority of their income. Many of them are freelance-gigging musicians, and so all of their gigs were canceled, our teaching was canceled.
On Screen: Krystal Ford
Image on Screen:
Video collage of kids playing instruments remotely;
images of young adults playing instruments;
Zoom footage of instructor talking to different kids remotely;
young man playing cello remotely
We did have to move online fairly-quickly,
so we did start meeting as an orchestra through Zoom,
and having weekly check-ins with our students.
“Questions, comments, concerns”?
“That’s me, Hello! – Ok – Yeah”
They submitted a lot of videos of themselves playing and practicing.
Text Card:
Bank of America provided the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra with a $25,000 grant
to support operations as they adapt their education and youth development programs.
Private sector support not only provides the stability we need to operate,
but it also helps us become creative and innovative,
Image on Screen: Zoom call with 4 people talking
On Screen: Krystal Ford
Image on Screen:
Teacher in front of group of students holding instruments
Text on Screen:
Three out of 15 MYO teachers are alumni of the program
and do things like create our MYO university to help create the next pipeline of teachers specifically black and brown teachers.
Representation is very important, and it's important for kids to see themselves in order to go into those careers
Image on Screen: Students playing instruments outdoors wearing masks
We're going to also start creating instructional videos to help some of our beginner students.
On Screen: Krystal Ford
I love holding kids to a high-standard and challenging them, because little kids can do really big things.
Image on Screen:
Video collage of kids playing instruments remotely
We're still trying to figure out our performance aspect.
But, the good thing about performing online is
that you can actually reach a lot of people.
Text Card:
The grant to the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra
is part of Bank of America's additional $100 million commitment to help local communities impacted by the coronavirus
Learn more at bankofamerica.com/community
Bank of America logo on screen
Disclaimer:
Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC ©2020 Bank of America Corporation
