As we prep for this steel pan festival in Denver for next year, one of the tasks is to figure out how large is the steel pan community as it stands now. I was lucky enough to come across a study done by Brandon Heskett of Arizona State University. He did an exhaustive three year study of the all the steel pans associated with schools and universities across the country. To my surprise and pleasure, he hooked me up with his study. The list was certainly impressive. There were over 500 schools with a steel pan program. That's a ton of students. It is fertile ground for growing the exposure of steel pan. In particular, I was very interested in those schools west of the Mississippi. I haven't had a chance to closely examine those schools, but I am interested to see what the distribution is. I was surprised at the high number back east and the midwest. It was fascinating.
Now, think about this. If we could develop a large steel pan festival and invite schools/colleges to participate, I know the festival would be successful. Couple that with the unknown number of community and professional bands and invite them as well, I think we could have a very well rounded program. My goal will be to figure out what to have them do once they get here. Sure, they could see the sites of Denver. There has got to be more than performing for them. Is it a competition component to the festival? Is it access to steel pan/musician workshops? Not sure. I have a brainstorming session with my partner next week for about three hours. I'm sure we'll hash this out. Today, I'm off to pick up resources on starting a non-profit which I had out from the library before.
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