Making it Work: Insights on Diversity

“Equity is the precursor to renewed societal relevance in all western classical forms of music.” - panelist, Andrew Adridge, co-founder Opera InReach. Over the past few years, the topic of diversity in choral music has reached a tipping point and has emerged as one of the most important facets to fostering inclusivity, relevance, and positive change in choral music today. As a global shift continues to take place surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion, there are questions that we all should continue to ask ourselves in order to ensure that we don’t fall back into antiquated and exclusionary patterns. Gender, ethnicity, disability, age, sexuality, faith, and many other forms of heterogeneity deserve to be acknowledged not just in the repertoire that we choose or the language that we use during rehearsal, but rather on a holistic, all-encompassing scale. This 4-person panel of voice professionals will discuss topics such as what it is like to work as a “diverse” person in the choral field, what challenges we face as leaders in this time surrounding tokenism, how we envision the future of this art form to evolve in North America, ideas of how to create more accessible environments, and what the term “equity” really means in 2022.

Moderated by Floydd Ricketts
with panelists Andrew Adridge, Arianne Abela, Haitham Haidar and Dr. Tracy Wong

https://www.podium2022.ca/criticalconversations.html