E-Mail This Article to a Friend Sole music The first annual Walk for Music is an imaginative, innovative approach to community-based fundraising for the arts

MORE THAN 1000 walkers. Some 5000 donors. And about $100,000 that will be raised by approximately 65 Greater Boston music organizations — from the New England Philharmonic to the Somerville Community Chorus, from the Back Bay Chorale to the James M. Curley School Arts Team. On Sunday, May 22, all this will come together under the banner of the first annual Walk for Music, a unique effort by small arts groups to raise money and public awareness about the importance of community-based music programs.

"If we, the music-makers, don’t stand up to support the arts, who else is going to do it?" asks Ellen Schreiber, an amateur singer and arts activist who is the founder and executive director of the Walk for Music. "This really is about grassroots organizing, and bringing people out who care about music. They’re coming out to support the music programs that they feel strongly about."

What makes the Walk for Music different from most pledge walks is that each group taking part is not only responsible for putting together a team of walkers and signing up sponsors, but it also gets to keep all the money it raises. In effect, the walk — a two-mile stroll through the Back Bay Fens, part of the Fenway Cultural District — consists of 65 individual fundraising campaigns, with the visibility that comes from presenting a united front. And those who’d like to take part but haven’t pledged to one of the participating groups can still sign up, either on the Walk for Music Web site or at the starting line.

Musicians will perform during registration, along the walk route, and at a post-walk rally aimed at raising the community’s consciousness about the importance of funding for the arts. Speaking will be Schreiber; Susan Hartnett, director of the Mayor’s Office for Arts, Tourism, and Special Events; Dan Hunter, executive director of Massachusetts Advocates for the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities; and Hubie Jones, a veteran community activist as well as the founder and president of the Boston Children’s Chorus. The rally will close with a sing-along led by gospel singer Donnell Patterson, who is, among other things, program director of the Roland Hayes School of Music in the Boston Public Schools and music director at St. Paul AME Church in Cambridge.

Schreiber is careful not to criticize the lack of taxpayer support for the arts in Massachusetts, preferring to keep the focus on her unusual fundraising effort — one that she hopes will generate as much as $5 million in a few years. Nevertheless, there’s little question that the public sector could do far more to nurture what has become our second-largest industry. According to some estimates, tourists who come to New England to experience its arts and culture spend $6.6 billion per year — yet funding through the Massachusetts Cultural Council was cut by 62 percent at the peak of the state’s fiscal crisis three years ago.

"No one comes here for the weather," says Hunter. "They come here to see our cultural and heritage institutions. Increasingly, part of our competitive advantage in this state is rooted in the arts and culture." Among the messages he intends to get across at the Walk for Music is the dedication represented by so many people taking part in such an event. "Any time you get 1000 people marching on an issue like this, I suggest to politicians and legislators, take a look," Hunter says. "We’re asleep at the wheel here."

Late last month, the Massachusetts House adopted a budget proposal for next year that would increase the council’s funding by $1.3 million — just a small part of the $12 million that was cut in 2002, but $2.3 million more than recommended by Governor Mitt Romney. The Senate should come through with at least as much as the House when it begins its own budget deliberations. And Romney should reverse his short-sighted proposal to keep cutting.

According to Schreiber, the Walk for Music is being organized almost entirely by e-mail and the Web — something that couldn’t have been done as recently as 10 years ago, she notes. By focusing on the sorts of small music groups that are overlooked by funders such as corporations and foundations, the walk will serve as a model for self-empowerment. Moreover, pledge walks are a proven fundraising tool with which people are already comfortable. "It is the one socially acceptable way to raise money, and it is not that hard," she says.

The beneficiaries are a diverse group, and include classical, jazz, and folk ensembles, school programs, and even drum-and-bugle corps. The Walk for Music is no substitute for a more enlightened public approach to funding the arts. But it’s a worthwhile and innovative approach that seems destined to grow into an annual event that will prove vital to enhancing the well-being of the region’s cultural community.

The Walk for Music will be held on Sunday, May 22, from noon to 4 p.m. Participants will gather at the basketball courts in the Back Bay Fens, opposite the intersection of Park Drive and Jersey Street. To find out what you can do to help, visit the organization’s Web site at www.walkformusic.org

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