Wednesday, January 11, 2017

music like a tempest, box kite

In a discussion with a coworker yesterday it came up that in many of the shopping malls in our area, there are more and more empty spots. Likely it is due to more and more shopping happening online.

This is putting people out of work. So while it is convenient to order things online, it is not entirely socially responsible.

Anyhow, with all of this empty retail space I had an idea, though the funding for it presents a challenge. The basic premise is to create small musical performance halls.

In a small retail space have room for single performers with portable instruments. Coordinate with conservatories and other musicians to have single or duet performances during peak times that people are in the mall.

In a larger retail space, have one that has a piano so that piano performances can happen. Have others where quartets have room.

In the largest retail spaces, have room for a band to play. Rock, blues, jazz, fusion, country, ballads, and so on.

In each case, have tables and chairs for the audience to sit and eat. If this retail space that is now a musical performance space is close to a food court, all the better.

Have baskets or bins in various places throughout the musical performance space so that audience members can make fiduciary contributions to the performers.

The only problem is that the retail space would normally have a tenant that is paying rent to the owners of the space and this musical performance use of the space would never be sufficiently revenue generating to pay that rent.

If I was a multi-billionaire, I could set up a fund whose dividend payments could pay for this. Alternatively, if the government had an increase in its Arts budget, it could be the government that pays for it.

1 comment:

ghost said...

the artist in me loves this idea. the other parts do too, even the negative realist who knows it'll never get funded.