My name is Stanford Thompson. And I am the Executive Director of Play On Philly, which is an after school music program here in the city that works with some of the most vulnerable children and help them develop the skills that they need to be successful later on in life. So we believe it's really important for their cognitive abilities, behavioral, even academic achievements, for those to really be in the forefront of everything that they do musically. And keep standards very high. And provide them with every single opportunity that they need to excel. We work with over 300 students every day after school, for 3 hours, in a very rigorous, fast paced environment. And perform over 30 concerts a year. And in terms of the work that I do with professional orchestras around the country, well, many orchestras really do not reflect the communities that they're in. When we think of major orchestras, like Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Cleveland or even Chicago. These are cities where the majority of people are of color, but most times you can only find between, probably, one to five people of color that are actually full-time musicians. None of those orchestras even have a conductor of color. So, sometimes there can be a pretty big disconnect between the people that live in the people and what they see on the stage that doesn't necessarily reflect either their musical interests. Or even just the level of diversity that I think that they would come to expect in many other places. So through the process to get into an orchestra, musicians will audition behind a screen for every round except the last round. So in the final round the screen comes down because the committee feels that it is important to be able to see the musicians play. Even sometimes in that round, the other musicians in that particular section will join the candidate on stage and perform with them. So, they feel that that's important. However, you can kind of argue, at the end of the day, you want the best sounding musician, and you do that by hearing. So, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is the only orchestra in the country that keeps the screen up every round of the audition. They actually have the highest level of diversity of any American orchestra. And it's also the hardest orchestra to get into. They have one of the highest salaries. So, it's very interesting when you see musicians who could not gain entrance into the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, but then could move on to win a job in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Sometimes even in the same month, or within two or three months. But what is unfortunate is that I try to work with orchestras to help them understand the level of bias that those musicians that are on the search committee have, and how sometimes that can hold back musicians of color. It can also hold back women. And even when you think about perhaps a woman playing trombone or tuba, or even trumpet, I mean, those instruments, very rarely will you find women in those sections. And it's really easy once you see a woman playing an instrument like that, for example, it's very easy to say, well, perhaps they might not be able to physically handle that. Or even perhaps someone of color, I might not want in the section with me. Once an orchestra musician wins a job, then they have to go through a tenure process. Most times the process will only take one year to complete. Sometimes an orchestra might drag it out for two years, or even three years. But if a musician is coming from another job, they usually can only receive one year of leave. So it's usually important for the orchestra they have just gotten into, for them to make up their mind within a year. And in the tenure process it's very easy to pick out very little things that might be wrong with their playing. And through that, that's where a lot of musicians of color do not stay. So although they might win in the entire committee. And it could be musicians that their in the viola section or a percussionist that are listening. Although they might hear this person being the best, most of the time it can be up to their colleagues that they sit next to. If they have that bias between them and the conductor that can say, we don't want you to stay. So, of course, I mean, all of these arts organizations have the same issues. Where you will rarely find people of color working on staff or even on the board. And those types of challenges most times can hurt the organization. So, when I look at a lot of the parallels, it ends up being a lot of the same issues. Who's helping to identify great talent? Again, both from a staff perspective and from a musician or an artist perspective. Who then encourages and provides opportunities for them to gain access to the types of things that will help them get promoted, be noticed, gain very crucial experience. Playing in an orchestra is a very difficult work. And most of the time, these musicians come from smaller orchestras before they would make it into an orchestra like the Philadelphia Orchestra, for example. Not providing an opportunity for advancement really hurts when it comes down to having an audition for a major position. Then, often times, you may see no one of color in the auditions, or very, very few. And then of course, once they get into the orchestra, how can you also promote them into a position that then they are in a spot to help recruit, bring on audition, and even help retain other musicians of color, or other staff of color, or board members of color? So, this has been happening for a really, really long time, and a lot of it was purposeful. Back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, when organizations really started to rise in prominence, they were raising lots of money, building big endowments. And over the years, the baton ends up being passed to someone that looks just like them. So a lot of times you will see board chairmen, conductors, the heads of orchestras, even the heads of certain sections of the orchestras, primarily being white males. And again, in many biased viewpoints, they are constantly lifting someone else up that looks just like them. And I think at every step of the way, as an organization you would probably say to your board, we need to find more board members. So, of course the board members are looking within their own Rolodex, and their friends. And if, quite frankly, they do not have many friends of color, Then they may not get on the board. If a board minimum is 15 or $20,000, to be a member of that board, some boards are as high as $100,000. That could exclude a lot of people of cover from even being on the board. To take that same example into the staffs base, you would say we put out a job description for a new development director. Again, networks are really small, who receives that information. And the next thing you know, all of the candidates that are applying or even rise up for consideration tend to only have a certain type of background. And then the same thing with the musicians. So then it's very easy for the orchestra or even the organization and say, well no one of color even signed up to audition. And it's not my responsibility to make sure they're signing up for the audition. We want to be fair. And then after all of that, it’s just too late. Well I think in an orchestra does not pay attention to diversity. It begins to just erode, trust, relationships and diverse communities. And considering Philadelphia is a city that is predominantly people of color and actually the Cultural Alliance here in Philadelphia has then plan a research to show that family of color are actually more engage than the arts than even white families of their a huge opportunity. That family actually want to be engage to the arts. They would love to go the orchestra, but often time do not feel welcome and after decade of this it's, the orchestra is not a destination. Many arts places, museums, the ballet, theaters, it's just not a destination. So, those are negative effects, and then you'll have orchestras, for example, they will wait until Martin Luther King day to perform in the community. That will be the first time they bring in a conductor of color or a soloist of color or a feature, a composition by a musician of color. And at that time it's just too late. To use Martin Luther King Day for that purpose, when there are many conductors and soloists and composers that could be highlighted throughout the regular season. It sends a very clear signal that oftentimes that the orchestras do not value musicians of color and their contributions to classical music. So, if you do that long enough then it makes digging out of that situation even more difficult. And then to parallel that to organizations and businesses, it's a very similar situation. There are many companies in Philadelphia, for example, that hire a lot of employees of color. And after a while, it becomes a destination. People call her who want to work there. They want to develop their skills. It could be in operations. It could be a finance or programmer or service delivery. And, those skill sets tend to stay and some of those industries. And, I'd wish that, a lot of that talent could transfer over to the nonprofit space. But it's just, again if you go back to saying, well they did not apply. They did not show up. And I'm not responsible for it then, progress will slowly be made over for a long period of time I think it is difficult for people first to see their own bias within themselves. It's almost impossible. It's in the DNA of people today. I even think about myself. If I'm walking home, late at night in West Philadelphia. And even if I see a black male, who is bigger than me, with a hoodie, I can't clearly see what he might have in his hands, or pockets, that even myself I will come to a conclusion that this could be a bad situation. The closer I get to him. I go through it myself. I also do not blame other people that go through this. And but one thing that we very rarely do is we talk about it and admit it. Then are there things that we can do to protect ourselves from our own bias. When we think about bringing in more musicians of color, engaging more people, our themes of color. So for example, in the orchestra world, I would say probably back in the 40's and 50's, most orchestras in America were 100% male. And one thing that gave it away from women trying to get in orchestras were literally the sound of their shoes as they would cross the stage to perform behind the screen. So you immediately knew that was a women. So they changed the rule, they put carpet on the floor so that you could not tell what type of person was walking into the room. That carpet was put on the floor to help protect even the panel behind the screen. So that they can make the best decision possible. So, I think about that as a metaphor of how will, or what will we put in place, what carpet will we put on the floor? To protect the bias that we have and does it take me walking past five, big black strong men in West Philly with hoodies on, and not be harmed for me to finally erase that bias? Or is that saying that I could be harmed anytime on the street by anybody. And I trust that this person walking towards me will not hurt me. And let that trust grow. So I think, I mean, in terms of orchestras, number one is just to rely on your ear. I mean, you need to hear the musician. And you want to make sure that they're producing sound that would really blend well. With all of the other musicians. That's number one, and it should be the only rule. When I think about things that can really help, it's how do we think about people that are coming and trying to get into our organizations, gain entrance to our teams. What are we specifically doing to lift them up? Are we providing opportunities for them to understand what the process is like? Are we making sure that we erase everything on the resume that might give a little bit more bias? For example, a young musician that comes in that sounds great, but then you realize this musician is only 20 years old. They've never played in a professional orchestra, but obviously they have the technical and musical ability to do it. And we say, you know what? We're going to go with this anyway. And we will own who we bring on to the team, and if it's some of those ensemble skills that can obviously be learned, would we be willing to bring this personal into the thing. And it's what action would we take specifically to help make sure that person is successful? And I think it's very similar to what you would do to anybody. You just, you do not put a musician in a Philadelphia orchestra, and think that overnight they will be ready to adapt and change to every single new words that the orchestra does. Keep in mind this musicians Have been playing together for 30 years. And when they are playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Mahler's Fifth Symphony, they play it with a certain type of style that is unique in Philadelphia, and different in Pittsburgh, and different in Cleveland. So to think that you would bring anybody of color onto a team and that they will be 100% ready to fit in, it could be even the culture of the organization, let alone be able to handle the task. It's how far in a way are you willing to bend backwards to really help lift that person back up. So, I think about that a lot within orchestras. I think about that with the team that I run, that I have a responsibility to try to make my team as diverse as possible because I firmly believe it is good for business. So I think, one important thing is, you know, this concept of tokenism. I can't tell you how many orchestras I've played in where I have been the token black guy. [LAUGH] And, but I think in all of the healthy situations, I was given a voice. My ideas were heard, my perspectives were heard. And there's a difference between feeling heard and of course everyone just accepting whatever idea that I have. Not all the ideas came through. And it could be as simple as, we should be more involved in doing community work. Well, great Stanford, yes, that is important. But some of it was helping to show them the way of not only do I have this idea but I'm also given the opportunity to then go out and try and implement. So I think that if you're not giving voice to those ideas and really giving the leverage, then I think, you're always going to fall into this trap of having that token person on the team. And then it will be even harder for everybody else to take that person seriously. So, I think as much as leaders can empower people of color on various teams, I think that will be extremely important to avoid that problem. I think a lot of businesses can learn a tremendous amount from any great sounding orchestra. And in a great sounding orchestra you have 100 musicians on the stage that are willing to bend and stay flexible to what's happening around them. You, of course, have a conductor who's helping to set things like the pace or we call the tempo. They are also helping to shape different types of musical ideas. But if you think about it, every musician has the score in front of them. They have the notes in the music. They know what they're supposed to play. How they're supposed to play it, how long to hold the note, what pitch, everything. So if the instructions are really clear to your team about what needs to get accomplished, then the only thing a conductor really should do is to tell people, okay. This is when we're going to start, this is where we going to end and throughout this piece in the middle I might ask you to play a little bit louder than what is noted on the page. But I can't tell you just from my baton to change the notes that's on the page in front of you. So that's one thing. The other thing in terms of discipline and hard work. I mean each individual person is coming to the rehearsal already with 10, 15, 20,000 hours of practice and preparation. I don't care how you slice it, if your team members are not coming to the table prepared to bring solutions or ideas, then good luck getting through all of those challenges. And then I think about, really, the empathy that it takes for any leader to really understand what the musicians are going through. So in this case, a conductor has usually played an instrument. They know how hard it is to play a trumpet or a violin. Now, although I'm a trumpet player, I do not know how difficult it is to really play the violin. But I can empathize because I've been through a similar process of trying to figure out an instrument just like they have. So when you have someone that has a group of musicians like this, you won't tell your trumpet player to play louder or higher than he or she really can. You won't tell the violinist to play really faster or even painfully slower than they really can and is comfortable. So having that perspective of your entire team, of when you can push, when do you just need to let them be themselves and bring those ideas to the table. And then what are those very decisive moments that you need to take charge? I'm constantly trying to encourage every orchestra, every person in the workplace, that by building out diverse teams and perspectives. I think that's really what orchestras, organizations, companies really need to stay innovative, and to stay on the front edge of what is happening and what is changing. I think the moment you become so isolated from what's happening around you, then I think the only perspectives that you will continue to hear are the ones that you already have. So, I just want to encourage everybody to stay open. Include as many people as you can and there's really power in being diverse.
