Orgelkids’ Outreach Portfolio

Uses for Orgelkids span a spectrum:
from small, tightly choreographed groups to being at the mercy of heaving throngs in a public space,
from deep multi-faceted and impactful to fleeting, cursory interest (but new awareness nonetheless)…

Traditional Outreach

  • Keep an eye on “AGO Chapter News” in The American Organist for how AGO chapters are incorporating Orgelkids into their traditional outreach programs: Pedals, Pipes & Pizza (PPPs) & Pipe Organ Encounters (POEs)
  • Our introductory article in the May 2018 The American Organist outlines an in-school Orgelkids Encounter. Click here (under construction) for a more detailed description.

Guerrilla Outreach
though, given our audience, we could call it
Improvisational Outreach

The power and value of Orgelkids is twofold.  First, Orgelkids can serve as an informative resource to those already engaging with the pipe organ and interfacing with AGO, enriching those experiences (see traditional outreach above). Orgelkids is also opening new doors for exciting innovative outreach, which takes us to the second dimension of Orgelkids’ potential: its power to engage the public in venues where the public would least expect to encounter a pipe organ, in applications where its identity as an organ is almost secondary… guerrilla outreach, if you will, the purpose simply being to raise awareness.

 

Some of our favorite implementations have involved simply laying Orgelkids out for the public to figuratively trip upon…

Organ Unleashed
Summer 2017, Montreal

Orgelkids USA was invited by Thomas Leslie to be part of the Northeast Regional Convention/Montreal Organ Festival’s “Organ Unleashed”. We were happy for the opportunity to place Orgelkids at the mercy of the unsuspecting masses, at the steps of Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica. The tourists proved eager to engage in the process of building a pipe organ, with Alcée Chriss III and Peter Krasinski providing the soundtrack.

In this scenario, we help the builders make the conceptual leap from Orgelkids to full size organs by simply asking them, “If the organ you just built has 48 pipes, how many pipes do you you think the one in there (pointing to the basilica) has?” At the answer (7,000+), their jaws drop and eyes bug out, and some even take a spontaneous step towards the Basilica, eager to see the behemouth firsthand.

Mission accomplished.

June 21:
World Make Music Day

This example of guerrilla outreach demonstrates how Orgelkids empowers organists to get out into the streets to engage the public with their instrument. Make Music Day (MMD) began in France in 1982 as a worldwide celebration of music held annually on the 21st of June, in which musicians take to the streets to share their music. With Orgelkids, organist can ensure the King of Instruments is part of the joyful noise! (more)

 

Orgelkids’ escapades featured in Vox Humana include:

  • Museum workshop in conjunction with the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibit, “Things Come Apart”
  • Bach in the Subways: interactive outreach in a Seattle mall food court
  • Seattle mini Maker Faire @ MoPOP, because Orgelkids is part music, part engineering, part physics and totally engrossing!