Transcript of conversation with Sebastian Ruth

Sebastian Ruth:  My sense is the problem isn't necessarily in the concert hall and myself,  I quite enjoy the magic of stillness when you have a thousand people seated together hanging on every note of a performance that's going on on a stage. I think there's something quite beautiful about that  moment. The challenge is one of belonging and if a Hispanic child whose parents aren't familiar with this kind of art form sits there with his or her parents and doesn't feel that he belongs then  it becomes this alienating experience. You look around and there aren't people who look like you sitting in this audience. As you say, there's a set of norms about how you're supposed to behave and that sort of consumes your whole experience and you don't feel like you belong and there's- alongside that there is this issue of cost and how much it costs to go to a concert.

Jo Reed:  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Sebastian Ruth:  And it's not to say that it's the only prohibiting factor. Low-income families that we work with will still pay money to go to entertainment, but if you're going to pay money you're going to go to a place where you don't feel like you belong and the- let alone just the sort of language of music and whether that feels accessible or not, but if you kind of feel like you're the other in this space you're not going to opt for that experience again probably but--  So one of the programs we do is to bring families, both kids and their parents, to concerts but we surround it by a social experience. We have a pizza party beforehand and a group of teachers goes with the families to these concerts and we do some talking beforehand about what the music is. We do some talking at intermission about what's going on and try to just be a guide to the experience so that it is something that you- that a family comes to one of these concerts with us and feels like they've got the skill set; they know   what they're there for and they have things to listen for. And hopefully then having been introduced to it families may take themselves back and feel like, as with anything, if you know something about it you can feel like you belong there.