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What is Athletes and the Arts about?
71 Plays3 years ago
Our guests are Randy Dick and John Snyder, the two co-founders of the Athletes and the Arts initiative. We talk about why this movement is needed, and how they worked to bring sports medicine and performing arts medicine organizations together to better meet the needs of musicians, dancers, vocalists and all performing artists everywhere.
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Transcript
Introduction to Athletes in the Arts
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Athletes in the Arts Podcast, hosted by Stephen Karaginas and Yasi Ansari. Hello everyone and welcome to the first Athletes in the Arts Podcast, the first we hope of many.
00:00:28
Speaker
Thank you for being with us today. If you like what you hear today, make sure you please click subscribe and you'll be getting our podcasts as soon as they are made available. I'm Stephen Karaginas, a performing arts medicine physician near Detroit, Michigan. And I'm Yossi Ansari. I'm a registered dietician and certified specialist in sports dietetics.
00:00:46
Speaker
I work out in Los Angeles, California, and I'm so excited for you guys to all be a part of this new series of podcasts focusing on performing artists.
Origins and Vision of Athletes in the Arts
00:00:58
Speaker
Some of the talking points that we have today include where the idea of athletes in the arts came from. I get a lot of people asking me about athletes in the arts and where this organization originated from and where the idea came from, what the needs were, how did it get started,
00:01:13
Speaker
What are the main issues that athletes in the arts is trying to meet? And what are some of their future plans for performing artists? Now athletes in the arts is a coalition of 20 national sports medicine, performing arts medicine, wellness, and performing art organizations.
00:01:31
Speaker
ranging from athletic training, sports nutrition, orthopedics, general sports medicine. There's a lot that takes part in athletes in the arts and a lot of organizations involved in making sure that the needs, both physical performance, mental health needs of the athletes and the arts are all met.
Co-founders' Journey and Inspiration
00:01:54
Speaker
So today, for our first podcast, we thought we'd bring in the two co-founders of Athletes in the Arts and find out more about what it is, how it started, and where it's going. So we have Randy Dick, who is a fellow in the American College of Sports Medicine. He worked for 20 years with the NCAA managing its sports medicine and injury prevention programs.
00:02:14
Speaker
We also have John Snyder, a longtime musician, Grammy award-winning producer, a lawyer, and founder of the Artists House Foundation, dedicated to helping musicians and music entrepreneurs. John and Randy, we're so excited to have you guys here today, and actually this morning for me, it's 9.30 here in LA, but I wanted to learn more about how athletes and the arts began. Can you guys start off by telling us where this idea came from?
00:02:42
Speaker
Well, I will start. I am a member of an organization called the Joint Commission on Sports Medicine, and it's a meeting of non-for-profit sports medicine organizations that meets on an annual basis.
00:02:57
Speaker
And we happened to be meeting in New Orleans in 2009, along with the content of talking about various sports medicine topics. We also sort of broadened our approach and we had the Preservation Hall Jazz Band come in and play for our group of about 60 physicians and medical people.
00:03:18
Speaker
And it turned out that John coordinated that performance, and we had some very interesting discussion with them after that performance. And maybe, John, you want to give a little more thought around that.
00:03:34
Speaker
Well, you know, I was friends with the youth symphony conductor
Health Issues in Musicians and Athletes
00:03:39
Speaker
in New Orleans, Sean Montes, and he had come to my office a couple of weeks before you called me, Randy, and we were talking about how many kids he lost to injury in preparing them to play music, and I was surprised by that.
00:03:55
Speaker
And then just coincidentally enough, you called me a couple of weeks later and asked me if I could arrange for some musicians to come talk to some sports doctors about the issues of health and wellness with respect to musicians. And I was kind of surprised by that, like Kwame.
00:04:15
Speaker
you explained that you'd call the Chamber of Commerce, and they said call the Arts Council, and they said call Loyola, and they said call the School of Music, and they said call me. And so here I am. And it just so happened that the guy who was the manager of the Preservation Hall Band was one of my adjunct teachers for the program I was managing at Loyola.
00:04:39
Speaker
And so I called him as soon as you and I got off the phone. I think you said to me that these doctors were meeting at a national convention to discuss the issues of athletes, the health and wellness issues of athletes, but you had pretty well covered the topic of concussions and you were kind of interested in how musicians related to these issues.
00:05:03
Speaker
And so that was already a kind of a leap, but it connected with my interests with the Youth Symphony, and then also with my knowledge of Adam Shipley, he managed that man.
00:05:16
Speaker
So we were able to get them to come in and did this presentation. I think I remember that our miking system failed just before we
Similarities Between Athletes and Artists
00:05:26
Speaker
started. So I had to walk around with a handheld mic and interview these guys. But despite that ridiculous scenario, they were great. And there were like four of them, I think five maybe sitting in front of the panel of doctors.
00:05:41
Speaker
And they played. We played music. And then the doctors asked questions. And it was so revealing. You know, I think one of the drummers said that he thought at one point when he was playing, he was having a heart attack, but he was afraid to go to the emergency room because that would prove that he was having a heart attack.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so, you know, I think the doctors were full of questions and it was very all around, I think, a very positive experience for the musicians as well. My perspective of that is once we got into the Q&A, first of all, there was real value in these physicians seeing up close what goes into playing a music instrument of any kind. So that up close
00:06:33
Speaker
physical viewing of what was going on. But then the Q&A, I remember questions like, how often do you guys practice or play? How many days off a year do you get? The answer was like none, because they had to make money. And what do you do for nutrition or athletic training or
00:06:55
Speaker
medical help, well, we don't really have insurance. And so these light bulbs just went off. The more questions that were asked, there were two things that came to mind. One, many of the aspects of these performing artists were very similar to sport athletes. And two, they were a very underserved population and could benefit very much from the knowledge we already had in the sports world.
00:07:21
Speaker
And then after it was over, I think you or Jim Whitehead called me and said that was the highest rated event in the history of that organization. And so they thought they were onto something. This might actually, there's a reason to pursue this. And I think that's when we started the ball rolling.
Awareness and Education in Performing Arts
00:07:39
Speaker
What are the similarities in the health and wellness issues between athletes and performing artists?
00:07:48
Speaker
Now, have you guys thought about this issue before that event? I mean, throughout your career, John, you've been producing music and making music and working with musicians and performers all these years. So what experiences throughout that period of time kind of led you to that point of realizing there's a bigger need than just being able to have chances to play music?
00:08:07
Speaker
Well, I did work with a lot of musicians who had serious issues physically, you know, abuse issues and also mental health issues. But like Freddy Hubbard, we were making a record one time and he came to the date and his embouchure, his lips, his chops were so
00:08:31
Speaker
And I said, you know, Freddy, you can't possibly play like that. I mean, I'm a trumpet player too. I can't imagine. And he tried to play, but he couldn't. And I had to cancel the record date because there's just no way he could get through it.
00:08:49
Speaker
So it's, you know, it's always been an issue in the performing arts world. And, but I never thought of it as an issue amongst younger players, beginning players, elementary school players.
00:09:04
Speaker
And that's what shocked me about the whole thing. And also, to me, that was like, uh-oh. You kind of expect somebody that who plays an instrument, such a physical proposition. Look at Lewis Armstrong. I mean, he, at the end of his life, he really could not play. And it was because of 50 years of abusing his embouchure. And then a violin player, you can imagine the issues they might have.
00:09:32
Speaker
and tendinitis and everything else on their wrist, their elbows, their neck.
00:09:39
Speaker
and their hearing. And hearing health was always an issue for us too, because when we did a lot of live performances, I can remember being on tour with Ornette Coleman in Europe, and the band was so loud that it was like people just flocking out of the room as soon as the man started to play, they just headed for the exits. It was too bad, you know, and also it was just extremely loud. We actually had a concert at Carnegie Hall one time with Cecil Taylor's group and Ornette's group,
00:10:08
Speaker
And the fire marshal came in in rehearsal and he said, he went to me, he said, you can't do this concert tonight. And I said, why not? He said, because it's 120 dB in here. I said, oh, it is kind of loud, huh? So I couldn't get the musicians to actually agree to turn down. So I decided to pull the curtain across the stage and let them play in front of the curtain rather than on the stage. So they played on the lip of the stage and the sound was absorbed by the curtain.
00:10:36
Speaker
And we got the concern. Anyway, it's always been an issue. 120 decibels. That's like a level of a jet plane taking off. Yeah, it's too loud. I mean, I think you can, I think we know you could take up to 15 minutes of 100 dB before you're going to have hearing loss. So 120, I mean, it's almost instantaneous. So you really.
00:10:57
Speaker
don't want to do that. And so in the sports world, the music world, we're now pretty in tune to decibel level, but in sports world or not, because you see the big stadiums have signs louder, louder, louder. I mean, come on now. So don't take your kid to a football game.
00:11:12
Speaker
But once we got done with this meeting
Formation of the Coalition and Educational Efforts
00:11:17
Speaker
in New Orleans in 2009, I think we sort of looked around. And I came from the sports world, so I worked for the NCAA. And so basically, you sort of thought through it and you said, okay,
00:11:33
Speaker
Both athletes and artists practice and play every day. They play through pain. They perform at all times of day and night, different environments. They don't have a big off-season. They feel big pressure to succeed and risk career-threatening injuries. All of those things describe sport athletes, and people are comfortable with that. But when you think about it, it also describes many of our performing arts.
00:12:01
Speaker
And none of those people are being addressed. And then as John said, the performing artists also have unique challenges like the hearing loss issue or focal dystonia or performance anxiety. So we basically began to try to identify if anybody was looking in this area, and there were sort of targeted
00:12:23
Speaker
groups that were looking at parts of it and what athletes in the arts ended up being is a coalition of about 20 organizations, about half of them performing arts and wellness and nutrition organizations like athletic trainers and physicians, sports medicine physicians, and then half of them also music or dance groups. And so we've got music educators and
00:12:47
Speaker
Drum Corps International and a variety of groups like that. And I think that's probably the first time that those two groups had really overlapped and interacted. And so there were some things that the performing arts world was doing actually that could help sport athletes, like things like rhythm and synchronicity, that type of thing. And then lots of things going on in the sports medicine world like nutrition and how to handle jet lag.
00:13:14
Speaker
or how to handle overuse injuries that we could sort of push back and help with the performing arts. And that genesis is where athletes in the arts came from. So how did you get this off the ground? Because you have all these ideas. You got John from music and you from sports. So then where do you go next? How did you get the whole thing going?
00:13:36
Speaker
Well, I think the next group in was PAMA and the American College of Sports Medicine. So PAMA is the Performing Arts Medicine Association and American College of Sports Medicine sort of is the sports medicine side. So we identified those two groups and sort of had some conversations and
00:13:54
Speaker
Then we just got the ball rolling again. That little group along with John at Loyola, Bethany Boltman at the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, we tried to identify key groups. I knew more of the sports medicine groups and the PAMA knew more of the music and dance groups. We just grew this coalition over time slowly because we didn't want it to grow too fast. Also, the big thing for me was to create a course in health and wellness for the music student.
00:14:23
Speaker
So, and we did that. So with the help of a member of PAMA, what's her name, Randy?
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, Bronwyn and Bronwyn's in Australia and the university that she works with, they built this online platform and she provided it to our students and then we put it in a classroom setting with the teacher, me initially and later others. And so we became one of the first music schools in the country to have a three credit hour course in health and wellness issues.
00:14:59
Speaker
which covered all of these subjects from nutrition to mental health to performance anxiety to repetitive stress. And then the question is, how do you cause physicians who don't know about those specific repetitive stress injuries of musicians, how do you cause them to diagnose this properly and also to prescribe a rehabilitation plan to overcome it?
00:15:28
Speaker
There's preventative, there's a diagnosis, and there's a rehabilitation. Because if you're a violent player and you have repetitive stress, you have carpal tunnel syndrome, for example, which is common, and you go to a doctor, they're going to tell you to stop doing that, to stop using that. And you have a gig that night, so you can't really do that. So how do you solve the problem?
00:15:57
Speaker
I think the beauty of athletes in the arts is bringing up attention to all of these different elements because it's almost like you want to go to a physician who understands your needs. As an athlete who might have, for example, I work with a lot of athletes who may be at risk of the female or male athlete triad and it's like if you go to a doctor who doesn't understand sports medicine, they're not going to be able to fine tune and diagnose what it is that you're struggling with and help you with the art of
00:16:26
Speaker
whether that's your performance or your sport. So I think the beauty of athletes in the arts is bringing awareness to all of these issues and being able to send people to the right physicians and the right professionals to help them work out their art and the longevity of their performance.
00:16:47
Speaker
And that's one reason why PAMA and athletes in the arts started that certification program that would bring awareness to positions and others in the medical community to the specific issues and needs of performing artists. So that right there and just the nutritional issues. I mean, every professional athletic team has a nutritionist. That's not true for the Philadelphia Orchestra.
00:17:11
Speaker
I mean, we just don't think that way. But if you were, I mean, even just a rock band going on the stage, what do you eat before that gig? I mean, that's like, it's not something we usually think about, you know, you're going to drink a beer and smoke a cigarette, whereas you're engaging in anaerobic activity that if you were performing in a gym, you wouldn't be drinking the beer and smoking the cigarette.
00:17:36
Speaker
It's just an awareness issue, I think you wrote about that. And I think as well, as part of SCAN, the Sports Cardiovascular and Wellness Nutrition Group, the dieticians who are part of that right now, we are focusing a lot more on the nutritional needs of
00:17:51
Speaker
of marching arts and dancers and vocalists and it from everything from their uniforms to just long travel to getting ready for performance and as a former dancer I know that it's really hard to to get all of your needs met right before a performance so talking to and working with nutrition professionals who can really
00:18:16
Speaker
individualize your nutrition plan to help all of these specific needs that we don't even think about. Who thinks about uniforms when it comes to energy expenditure and long travel and access to food.
Wellness and Lifestyle in Musicians
00:18:28
Speaker
And so it's really important that I think that this organization has come about and you guys have done such a great job at developing this to help all the people who need it.
00:18:39
Speaker
We want the high school and college physical therapist or physician who takes care of the basketball team and the football team to take care of the band and the orchestra. In other words, just awareness that these issues exist because most of them do not know. But once they know, then they say, oh, and then of course they want to take care of those issues. But that awareness is essential.
00:19:03
Speaker
So go back a little bit, though, when you started Athletes in the Arts. I mean, it sounds like with a lot of programs like colleges and music schools, was there anything even in place back then for like just basic musician and performer wellness? New Orleans had the Musicians Clinic. I mean, that's the kind of the enlightenment of Bethany Boltman, who started that and who runs it.
00:19:27
Speaker
I mean, that's been around for a while. I'm not quite sure how long, but over 20 years. And so there is an awareness, but there's never been a connection between the sports community and the performing arts community. And I think that's the unique connection here.
00:19:46
Speaker
We did a thing at Butler University with a group of pianists who were competing for a national award or something. One of them said that a Juilliard student said that when he had pain playing, his instructor said, you're not practicing enough. It's the opposite. The teacher isn't aware. Now, I had a trumpet teacher who said to me, you can't always practice with the horn in your mouth.
00:20:15
Speaker
So he would make me sing. I'd be reading the part and I'd have to sing the part. I wouldn't be playing the part. So I could get the musical training in without the physical kind of impact of it. So you don't always have to be playing or rehearsing with the horn in your mouth.
00:20:33
Speaker
If you look at the sport, even professional sports right now, football, their practices are only two hours long. And they fine-tune them and they move every 10 minutes or 15 minutes, they're doing something different. Even the college athletes are doing that, but it's not necessarily what's going on in the performing arts world. So we want to try to take that
00:20:56
Speaker
over and do that. I have a quote that John Batiste, who is a part of our athletes in the art, he's an ambassador for us, but one of his quotes, what we are allowed to share, said, I went to Juilliard for six years and never in any of my lessons was there any instruction about nutrition or any sort of quantifiable method to determine the pros and cons of playing long hours. If I missed the note, I was just told to do it again to practice more.
00:21:23
Speaker
And so that's a philosophy that's out there, 10,000 hours, whatever. And I think in some cases, maybe it works. But I think we also need to explore new and creative ways of practice and performance. So what about the issue with the lifestyle of performers? Because one of the problems that we've seen over the years as far as buy-in for all these ideas and concepts
00:21:48
Speaker
is the idea that the performers, musicians, they smoke, they drink as part of their image. Dancers don't want to get too muscular because they look different. So how difficult is that issue conflicting with what your efforts are to try to help improve the wellness of these same performers? Well, of course, it's very difficult. I mean, it is true that the lifestyle of a
00:22:14
Speaker
A musician is somewhat different than the, not all musicians are not the same. If you're playing in nightclubs and you have one lifestyle, if you're playing in the concert hall, you have another. But so it does depend, but there's still this kind of universal need to understand what's happening to you when you're playing an instrument, when you're engaging in that repetitive action.
00:22:41
Speaker
and they all come upon it at some point. But there is this, the sports, the athlete's career is considerably shorter, typically speaking, than the performer's career, unless you're a dancer. But, you know, we had plenty of, we had a trumpet player in New Orleans who was playing at 100 years old. There's always outliers, but the fact of the matter is some of the greatest artists are in their later years.
00:23:09
Speaker
So there is something, it's possible to sustain it.
Research and Online Resources for Health
00:23:13
Speaker
And the idea is that in a creative sense, the artist has something to say that needs to be heard. And so if you're denied that chance, then there's a loss. There's something that we've missed that we could regret. So you want to kind of keep it going.
00:23:33
Speaker
So I think you'll find that professional musicians will pay attention to this, just like athletes. You're not going to catch a football player smoking a cigarette necessarily, unless it's a cigarette after a win or something. But basically, they know it makes a difference. Everything matters. So I think performers are more and more aware of that as well. So then what are the, today, now, with athletes in the arts has been going since 2013, right?
00:24:01
Speaker
Yes, formally, 2013, we had our launch with a national meeting at the American College of Sports Medicine. So now with the issues that you're seeing today, what are the main issues that you are focused on and trying to help improve? You mentioned hearing loss before. We talked about nutrition. So what are the things that you guys are looking to really make an impact with?
00:24:21
Speaker
Well, Steve, one that I have a real passion about is truly around performance. As John mentioned, there's a value of wellness and nutrition, getting good sleep, that type of thing, those kind of habits for just longevity of being able to do what you do, whether you're a dancer or a
00:24:40
Speaker
a musician but how do you optimize performance and how do you actually measure that the population we're dealing with is very very diverse it's diverse in terms of age because kids are starting to play music at
00:24:55
Speaker
very early ages. And as John said, it can go to 100. It's diverse in terms of genre, in terms of the music or dance routine that they do. And so you've got people of all different styles, ages, ethnicities, instruments, genres that are all needing this help. And so you can pick
00:25:19
Speaker
there's a ripe area of research, because any one of them doesn't necessarily, tuba player may benefit in a different way than a violin player might benefit. But there are general concepts out there of taking care of these people that we just need to get out there to educate and get this next generation of performing artists to think a little bit more about taking care of themselves and the next generation of the medical professionals and the music teachers and choreographers to realize it's their responsibility to help in that equation as well.
00:25:49
Speaker
I think that you've identified that one of the main things is research, and the other thing for me is education. So I would love to see the organization, which by the way needs to be formed as a nonprofit,
00:26:04
Speaker
So as we can raise money to accomplish that goal, I think it'd be a pre-standing organization as well as that is a coalition of like-minded interests. But for me, an online course that like Vonwyn did, that's available free to schools and not only colleges and music schools, but also secondary school programs. Because where there's a football team, there's a band.
00:26:31
Speaker
And that's kind of the irony of it. There has to be a music education program in a high school with a football team. And in the South, everybody's got a football team. So there's all these music programs.
Raising Awareness in Schools and Communities
00:26:44
Speaker
I mean, I saw one high school recently had a big marching band. They also had five orchestras, five orchestras. That blew my mind. But those kids know nothing about
00:26:58
Speaker
the health and wellness issues that are associated with what they're doing. I mean, if you can't go on a football field having some sense of preparation and training, but they'll march you up and down a football field for 30 hours with a tuba on your shoulders and not give you water.
00:27:14
Speaker
So it's like, you know, it's just a perception. There's not a perception of the similarities. And so I think one of our key goals is to continue ringing that bell of awareness that these things are similar and they need to have similar solutions. Yeah, I can't stress that enough. I think, again, the
00:27:32
Speaker
The beauty of what we want to accomplish in the future would be access to these resources. I actually know dieticians and nutritionists that work for the Juilliard School, the School of American Ballet, and the Boston Ballet, and I think
00:27:47
Speaker
that bringing awareness to these great resources that are on their campuses would be so beneficial. The other thing is I come from my recent position that I just left was at UC Berkeley Athletics. John, I think about the marching arts group and just like you said, there's a band with every football team. If we were able to bring more awareness to their hydration concerns,
00:28:13
Speaker
their energy needs on a day-to-day. I could have been the sports RD that worked with the band. Again, the beauty of this organization is that for the future, we have so much opportunity to not only bring awareness to this, to talk about why these schools and programs need to have a better budget to support health professionals that want to work with these different disciplines. Then also to those students at those schools,
00:28:41
Speaker
you know teach them why they need to be working with health professionals that can help them with their health needs and and just their individualized like nutrition or mental health or whatever that might be um and i think the future of athletes in the arts right now i know from a nutrition perspective i'd love to focus more on the body image concerns of the
00:29:04
Speaker
all the performing arts athletes out there and again hydration issues and we've talked about a lot more of the specific elements that people don't ever always think about on a day to day that we really need to be addressing to optimize their health performance and just overall wellness.
00:29:21
Speaker
exercise as medicine. I mean, that's ACMs that claim to fame. And that's exactly what musicians need. I mean, if I'm a trumpet player and I'm going to hold this six pound weight in front of my face for four hours, are there muscles that I can strengthen through exercise? And of course, that's true. And that's true for any instrument. So you could, if you connect the dots, you can prepare yourself for longevity and sustainability
00:29:48
Speaker
from a physical standpoint. So you got your nutritional standpoint, your musculoskeletal standpoint, as well as, and I teach the business and legal standpoint. So I'm trying to make a holistic approach to the sustainability of performing artists, because I think it's essential to the sustainability of the society.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's easy to forget that most professional performers, musicians, dancers, when they go on the road, they usually don't have the resources they need to stay healthy or even have access to them. It's like being on a minor league baseball team, going from one place to the next every day and having to optimize that performance. It's a real challenge.
00:30:26
Speaker
And, and oftentimes as well, if you're hurt a little bit, there's 10 people behind you that are willing to take your job and take your place. And so there's a mental challenge of being have to go out to perform because it's my livelihood.
00:30:42
Speaker
I also want to bring attention to the other project that we've worked on in the last year has been all of our fact sheets. And so I want everyone to be aware of those resources as well. And they're available on the athletes in the arts website, which is pretty cool because we have fact sheets that have been created by dieticians. One, for example, for the marching arts and drum corps.
00:31:06
Speaker
Lisa Dorfman came up with a great resource for those who are traveling and then the struggles that they face while traveling too. So sharing of foods that may be occurring on the tour buses, sleeping issues, meeting their needs, access to food. So we have tons of resources on the Athletes in the Arts website. In addition to the studies that are taking place,
00:31:34
Speaker
COVID recommendations to prevent COVID exposure, and again, the nutritional needs of all of our performing arts athletes. There's tons of great resources, so I hope that everyone can go out and check those out, and I want to bring more awareness to those resources as well.
00:31:53
Speaker
I think those resources apply not only to the performer, but also to the teacher, to the parent, to the coach, to the position. It's something for everybody because there are all different kinds of groups involved in the mutual, the mutuality that we share.
Interdisciplinary Benefits and Future Goals
00:32:13
Speaker
The coalition is, like Randy said, independent organizations that
00:32:19
Speaker
overlap in this mutuality of concern for the health and wellness issues of performing artists. So the athletes have always had attention in that matter, in that way, not always, because concussions have been an issue for a long time. But it's true that it's more developed, and there's more money into that and going into sports.
00:32:43
Speaker
And so I think what we're hoping for is that it will be recognized that performing arts are of a similar nature and importance, if I may say, and so worthy of the same degree of attention and expense.
00:33:01
Speaker
If any of parents are listening to this, you have a right as your children are developing into this. We want to be sure that they have fun. We don't want to over make it a chore. But, you know, we want to have this next generation, including you, to be sure that the wellness part of
00:33:24
Speaker
an adventure in performing arts is noted by the people that are providing guidance to them, whether it be the choreographers, the music educators, or other folks. So parents, you have a right to check about that in the same way as you would have that expectation if your son or daughter was going out to play basketball and you had a pre-participation physical exam.
00:33:46
Speaker
So thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate all the time you spent with us today. Is there anything that you have coming up here in the future that athletes in the arts is really focused on? Well, I kind of mentioned the idea of building an online course to the extent that it works online. Every every school of music should have some interest in this. And that's going to take a while to to to develop. Now, NASA did create standards, but they left it up to the schools to determine the timeline for meeting them and also to define them.
00:34:15
Speaker
So do we need oscillators in every practice room? I think so, at least in every ensemble space. But I think that's the way the future for a part of us, a part of our initiatives, I think is trying to reach out to teachers and in the educational world
00:34:35
Speaker
to make them aware of this. And so I think awareness is the number one problem to solve and from that will become some action. So first step, make them aware that these problems exist and there are solutions available.
00:34:48
Speaker
Steve, we've had, and Yasi, we've had a lot of things on the plate this year. A lot of it's about creating better educational materials and enhancing our website, which is something that anybody can go to and access. We are a non-for-profit. We currently sit under the American College of Sports Medicine Foundation, but eventually will be our own individual entity, as John has mentioned.
00:35:14
Speaker
We do have an initiative right now that a couple of our members are exploring, which is trying to create a special envoy in the Biden administration to see if we can have sort of an envoy or a secretary of cultural and arts. That may be a bit of a stretch, but we're at least exploring that. And again, I think anything like that would help us in terms of the performing arts and taking care of them.
00:35:41
Speaker
Let me just close on my end here with athletes in the arts again. We have a website, please visit it. And the mission of athletes in the arts is basically integrating the science of sport and the performing arts for mutual benefit. So we're taking what we know about sport, we're trying to push it into performing arts,
00:35:59
Speaker
And there's also some value in terms of what's going on in performing arts, music, and dance to be able to push back to the population going the other way.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:36:09
Speaker
For example, folks with PTSD coming back from Afghanistan or teaching
00:36:18
Speaker
dance stamps or ballet to have better footwork in the sport athlete world. So there's a great niche here for people that are interested in exploring this and making a difference. We all are on this call because we have a passion for the performing arts and each of us is approaching it in a different way. So I'm glad we had a chance to explore this a little further. And with that, we will wrap up this episode. Randy Dick, John Snyder, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. You're welcome.
00:36:46
Speaker
Yasi, always a pleasure to co-host with you. Thanks for being here. Yes, thank you. That does it for this episode. Thank you so very much for listening in today. If you like what you heard, please click subscribe and you'll get our podcast out to you as soon as they are available. For Yasi Ansari, this is Stephen Karaginas and you've been listening to the Athletes in the Arts podcast.