2018, A Year in Review

It’s been a busy year full of new initiatives, community partnerships, website updates, meet & greet jam sessions and more. We began the year with our first meet & greet which happened at Winfrey Point in Dallas. These events are open to the public with the intention of bringing our music performance community together. Many members, non-members and even non-musicians were in attendance for a delightful event. In addition to messaging through our newsletters and emails, you can keep track of our events through our dedicated FaceBook group:

www.facebook.com/groups/235616120446970/

We recorded video interviews in February that capture personal perspectives on the history of Fort Worth and Dallas musician history but also offer insight into the history behind the merger of locals. If you missed those, check out our YouTube Page:

www.youtube.com/user/AFME1939

The spring was busy preparing for and managing the festivals which went very smoothly overall. I appreciate all our members and staff that helped to make them a success. We also had another Meet & Greet in June hosted in partnership with the Greater Denton Arts Council. We made an effort to message to the university while partnering with the GDAC on social media messaging. This led to a diverse turnout of interested students and non-members along with some long time members. We had our final Meet & Greet for 2018 in November hosted at Shipping and Receiving in Fort Worth.

We also received funding from MPTF this year for a number of solo performances through their MusicFest initiative. Due to the national office making gains with the streaming music industry, the funding to MPTF has increased leading to an increase in funded performances. This not only brings more gigs to our members but allows us to build new community partnerships with the co-sponsors.

Musicians know about deferred gratification. It should be no surprise then that it might take a while before the hard work of creating a new booking website that gets client traffic pays off. As musicsourcedfw.com has grown, so has the client traffic. I encourage all members that would like to get more bookings to make sure that they have a page and that it looks as good as possible.

As a part of the release of the new website for the local, I am writing a blog to showcase our members. I enjoy going out to meet and hear our members on the gig and take pictures to share. If you are interested in being featured in the blog, contact me directly. You can find a link to the first few blogs I have created on the front page of our new website here:

www.musiciansdfw.org

I look forward to continuing the push to build community relationships thereby growing awareness of our association but also through reciprocal support to grow our inclusion and value with the community at large.