Re: small community events

[borzykowski <borzykowski...>]

----- Message d'origine -----
>I was wondering if there
> are others on the list who also live in smaller communities who have been
> involved with organizing Jewish cultural events within their own
> communities.  What has worked and what has not?  How do you market your
> events to draw people to them?  How do you get the community excited and
> involved?

Dear Helen,
I feel very concerned with your questions!
As I already told you in a previous email, I'm staff member of the AMJ
(Jewish Music Association) in Geneva and we have often to deal with these
problems. A small community
(about 3000 jews among 600'000 inhabitants in Geneva) means a small budget
and every time we organize a concert or a similar event, we are forced to
spend much time writing letters and knocking at  doors to get the money
for... but till now, we've never got any sponsoring from the jews!
Paradoxically, we found more financial help among the official "goyim"
organizations (the Cultural Dept. of the City, the Public Schools Dept., the
Swiss Lottery, etc.)

Most of our public shows take place in goyim festivals, concert halls or
night-clubs!
As musicians, we would play "free" for jewish cultural or commemorative
events
(like yom hashoah) but they often prefer a CD or invite christian musicians!

Two other examples:
Last november, we concieved and elaborated a klezmer week-end with musicians
from Geneva and Bern  in a very marginal and alternative theater. It was
rather
strange but very intersting to see there a mixture of young  goyim (who were
familiar with the place but not with the music) and old jews  (who came
there for the first time to listen to the music)! We couldn't get any
financial help from any jewish bank nor community we asked for. We printed
posters,
sended mailings, prepared jewish food and drinks and sold CD's at the end
of the concert. It was a real success from the artists' and the visitor's
point of view, but  we made no benefit nor had money loss.

We recently invited for a concert Marcel Salomon (if klezmer
fans don't know this fabulous clarinet player, they must get one or many of
his CDs : First Klez, Klez Best, A Dreydl, The art of Trio, (on Syncoop) &
Klezmer ) with
Wim Hamans. For the musician's fees, we got 1000 swiss francs from the
local cultural festival "La Fureur de Lire" but the entry had to be free! We
could get  a
reduced price flight ticket for the musicians from the cultural service of
the dutch embassy!
We put a hat at the outdoor,  that was the way we could make both ends meet.

Another problem is that some other jewish associations sometimes organize
parallel events without us: We experiences it twice recently :
We planed for next year a concert with catholic,
orthodox and jewish versions of psalms... and we casually discovered in the
next year's program of the"Ateliers d'Ethnomusicologie" (a cultural ethnic
music association in Geneva)  that they took the wind out of our sails with
this idea.

In the same state of mind, a jewish bank sponsored a "semi-private" concert
of Françoise Athlan in Geneva next week and nobody thought to associate the
AMJ, not even to inform our members.

As you can see I'm rather undeceived about the help we can get from a small
community!
I hope you make more positive experiences.

Shalom
Michel

Michel Borzykowski
12 chemin Franconis
CH-1290 Versoix
Switzerland
tel (+41/22) 755.41.23
fax (+41/22) 776.14.94
e-mail: borzykowski (at) infomaniak(dot)ch
homepages: http://www.infomaniak.ch/~borzykowski
&: http://homepage.iprolink.ch/~tengler/RojinkesMandeln



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