Yinchi Chang

I had Five goals this term and here are my thought 10 weeks later:

 

1. Familiarize myself with blogging.

• My first time blogging this term. I can definitely see the usefulness of it now in regards to marketing oneself and presenting one’s work on a media platform such as wordpress or anything alike. Facebook for me now seems more like a communications tool rather than the portfolio like quality of a blog I guess. I hope to keep on building and working with this site.

2. Acquire basic knowledge of Adobe Illustrator.

• Graphic Standard was a fun project after I learnt all the basic rules about it, then I was able to do basic design with it. I think my musician’s ocd flared up a little after the whole project was done, because then I knew that I have mastered a little of something, and now I want to perfect it even more.

3. Adapt basic marketing knowledge into my daily work with World Music Series.

• Lunch Time mini concerts is definitely something I thought up as a marketing and promotional campaign for WMS this term. I thought that by inviting our own students with special talents can bridge the gaps that WMS has right now with their target student audience member. I am excited to see it happening in the next couple of months. I have also started am email list for our current WMS supporters from the community. I know we will need their help in the near future.

4.  Be comfortable with the marketing and media language overall.

• I think I still need work in this area,  I don’t talk marketing everyday. I feel that I have a broad and general key concepts understood but its not quite ingrained in me yet.

5. Good things take time, I will try and update myself with the world as much as possible.

• I don’t know if I did a good job staying visible as a musician this term, however, I did make an attempt making a poster for my upcoming recital next term. I have felt shy before about publicizing school of music events that I am involved  in because of the excessive talk of the “elitism”  that circulates in ours classes. I fear that if I announce the things I do I would be marked as being an elitist since I am a classical musician who also happens to play the most awkward instrument in the orchestra that no one knows about.  The term elitist is being used so broadly in our discussions and often refers back to the high arts seems to me almost as a way of segregation and stereotyping. I can see from both sides how the high arts are being tagged as being the elite, but has it occurred to the ones that are tagging us, that it may just be the fact that many of us are simply not good with communication and we are very shy? And from protecting ourselves from the world we as a whole bubble wrap ourselves to not get hurt? This is an internal problem that we have realized and we are slowly branching out with other cultural sectors. It will take sometime for this stigma to go away obviously. And we are trying our best to undo this tag line of ours as the best we can. For example, many orchestras now have outreach programs specifically designed for  their cities and education system. Musicians and artists alike are more audience friendly these days, thanks to media technology and smart marketing and business strategies. The high arts are updating itself and more user friendly and accessible like everything else on this planet.  Therefore, by calling all high arts and culture “elitist” is rather irresponsible and shows no signs of wanting to understand the issues and problems involved in the high arts. The act becomes ignorance driven by fear of the unknown. Not to mention that the use of “elitist”  is becoming the new “crazy” in our modern language describing things that we have not the capacity to cope with.

My final thought for this term is that I learnt a great deal, and I am open to learn more.