As most of you know, the in-school program is on hold until next school year. This was a dreadfully hard decision to make, but as we consulted with our artists and many of you and tracked how all your districts planned to return safely, we determined that a hiatus is the safest and most realistic decision. Nevertheless, we know that it poses a real challenge to us all: how does Muse keep inspiring young people with the arts in Dayton?

Mary is always reminding all of us on staff to lead from our strengths, and some of our best strengths are our relationships with you and with our wonderful artists. So, Mary, Doug, Robin and I took this year as an opportunity to experiment with new ways of bringing artistic experiences to your students and classrooms.

We are beyond grateful that many of you answered our programming survey back in the late summer, and we used that feedback to help us create new virtual content with our arts partners! Some are based on in-schools:

• Dayton Opera will bring us a revised Cinderella Trilogy, which most of you never got a chance to see in the spring, but now with additional content like multilingual subtitles and artist interviews.
• Others will come from artists you know and love from Summer Institute: Eli Yamin from the Jazz Power Initiative is adapting the jazz musical Holding the Torch for Liberty, all about the powerful, bold, brave women who began the fight for women’s suffrage, into a podcast series.
• We also have the chance to hear master storyteller Omope Carter-Daboiku take on the role of “Samantha Dew,” a young African American female entrepreneur and conductor on the Underground Railroad, accompanied by booklists from the Dayton Metro Library.

These are only some of offerings planned for our new virtual ‘menu’. They are meant to meaningfully supplement your curriculum and will be accessible anytime from a special page on our website, which we will share with all of you as the first content becomes available (we’re aiming for late October).

All the same considerations that went into the in-school program are true of student member opportunities, too. The $13 membership fee has been waived this year. Doug is working hard on unique virtual workshops for your students who love to perform. And while we can’t yet share any out-of-school performances right now, I do want to tell you about Met HD Live. We are so excited that we get to keep partnering with the Met, and even deepen that partnership. They are granting us up to 3000 educational licenses to Met Opera on Demand, their streaming video catalog. We’re working with our wonderful Met HD coordinator, Amedee Royer, to develop fun virtual workshops and a way to enjoy the opera together even though we won’t be meeting up at the movie theater. There is more info to come, and if you’re interested in Met HD Live please email me right away.

I also want to let you know that the Met Opera staff is helping us create an all-opera Summer Institute 2021! We will explore powerful stories and strong characters with an eye to relevant and timely social issues. There will be much more to share later this year…

Notes (Related to Slide 5)