“Shelter Music Boston, which employs professional musicians to perform classical concerts in homeless shelters, will receive a total of $250,000 over five years from the Ilene Beal Charitable Foundation,” writes Mark Fuechec in Thursday’s (3/22) Spare Change News (Cambridge, MA). “The funds will allow SMB to continue its ongoing program of concerts at the Dimock Center and start a new children’s program. SMB’s goal is to take care of the artistic, social and cultural needs of homeless people, said Carrie Eldridge-Dickson, managing director of SMB…. SMB held the first performance of a newly-created monthly series of after school concerts on February 2. It is a pilot program, said Eldridge-Dickson, run in collaboration with the Boston Philharmonic…. Eldridge-Dickson explained that the hope is people enjoy the concerts and carry that motivation on to utilizing the other services that are available to them…. Nearing 70 concerts last year, Eldridge-Dickson … expects that number to grow.” Said Eldridge-Dickson, “For many of the homeless, both the physical and the emotional landscape can be really stark. If we can bring this audience a respite from all that for the period of a concert, that feels like a really important thing to do.”
Posted March 23, 2018
