Concert season has arrived! Many schools and programs are beginning to rebuild traditions that were put on hiatus when live concerts were not possible over the last school year or even years in some cases. Honoring traditions and bringing live music back into the lives of our students and families is very important but it also might be a great time to start some new traditions starting with concert programs!
Canva, my favorite online design and publishing tool, can help make the creation of your concert program a breeze. By utilizing one of the many program templates, the design decisions can be left to the professionals and you can spend your time personalizing the template you like best to your students and ensemble.
Canva can also help save the time that you might have traditionally spent next to the copy machine printing all of your programs (and, don’t forget, folding them) by creating a QR code that audience members can use to access the program.
This small change in tradition can save you a ton of time and still makes it possible to have beautiful programs to remember these events that we have waited a long time to enjoy again!
Here are the easy steps you can take to try it out.
There are tons of options that you can find by using the search box and narrowing your search choices using the left hand navigation bar by category (programs), style, theme or colors that you would like to include. You can also start with a blank program template and build each of these elements exactly to your taste.
Here are three program templates that are simple and easy to use if you are just getting started with Canva:
Once you find a template you like (or have decided to create your own), you can make any changes necessary to fit your ensemble.
You can easily add more pages, reorder pages, duplicate pages of the template, or add another one using the menu at the top of each page.
You also have all of the other amazing features that Canva offers available to you including the newer tables feature. You could use a table to easily organize student names, instrumentation or thank you’s.
Simply add a table of your choice to your design by searching for “Table” in the ‘Elements’ window. Next, add columns and rows by clicking on the 3 dots OR by right-clicking on the table.
Once your table is created, type into the cells by double-clicking. Once you have added your information to each cell, you can also recolor the gridlines of the table to make them disappear!
All the audience will see is nicely organized information. You will know how easy it was to make!
Once your program is complete, you will need to begin another Canva project to create a poster to display your QR code. Here is an example of one that I created that you can access and customize for your own use: QR Code Poster Template.
Tip: It might also be helpful to display a shortened link, or shortened URL, along with your QR code in case someone does not have access to a camera on their device. You can create a shortened URL by signing up for a free plan through Bitly at https://bitly.com/ (which will allow you to make 50 short URL links/month).
There are quite a few options for displaying your QR code depending on what you have available at your performance location.
I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about how easy and fun it is to create digital and physical concert programs in Canva!
Have you tried using virtual programs in the past?
How did audience members like it?
Would you like to take a copy of this with you? Click the button below and a copy of this will be sent directly into your inbox.
Download your copy
Katherine (Katie) Miller holds a Bachelor of Music in Education degree from Otterbein University (Westerville, OH) and a Masters of Educational Leadership from Antioch McGregor Midwest (Yellow Springs, OH). She has 15 years of professional musical experience as a music educator and performer.
She resides in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area where she teaches K-5 General Music and serves as a district model tech classroom. She was recognized in 2018 as a WPT Education Innovator by the Wisconsin Public Television Education team. Twitter: K8TMiller
Hello! I’m Katie Argyle – an Australian music technology trainer and consultant with a passion for helping music teachers through my business Midnight Music.
I’m a qualified teacher but no, I don’t currently teach in a school. I help teachers through my online professional development space – the Midnight Music Community – where there are tutorial videos, courses, links and downloadable resources.
I like to focus on easy ways to incorporate technology into what you are already doing in your music curriculum through a range of creative projects. I also run live workshops and have presented at countless conferences and other music education events.
If you want simple, effective ideas for using technology in music education, I would LOVE to help you inside the Midnight Music Community.
An online community where music tech professional development, lesson ideas, and accountability come together.
Claim your copy of our annual guide to free music technology resources, designed especially for music teachers. Discover interactive music websites, software, productivity tools, and assessment resources you can use in your music classroom for free.
Never felt happier in my job! THANK YOU, MIDNIGHT MUSIC. WOW! We LOVED our introduction to GarageBand… What’s In A Name is so fun and easy to follow. I used your teaching video, pausing it where appropriate for the students to go off and record. I was so proud of MYSELF when I tried it out that I KNEW the kids would love it too!”
Lee Sieracki Music Specialist Popular Courses Previous slide Next slide
This is the Privacy Policy for the Midnight Music website located at www.midnightmusic.com (“Site”).
The Site is operated by Midnight Music Pty Ltd ABN 87 619 652 603 (“Midnight Music” or “Company” or “we” or “us”).
Midnight Music understands the importance of protecting your personal information and undertakes to adhere to this privacy policy at all times to ensure your personal information is effectively safeguarded.
The Site provides various places for users to provide information. We collect information that users provide by filling out forms on the Site, communicating with us via contact forms, responding to surveys, search queries on our search feature, providing comments or other feedback, providing information when ordering a product or service via the Site, and other circumstances where collecting personal information is reasonable and permitted by the Laws of the State of Victoria, Australia.
We use information you provide to us to deliver the requested product and/or service, to improve our overall performance, and to provide you with offers, promotions, and information.
As you navigate through the Site, we may use automatic data collection technologies including Google Analytics to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. This will generally include information about your location, your traffic pattern through our Site, and any communications between your computer and our Site. Among other things, we will collect data about the type of computer you use, your Internet connection, your IP address, your operating system, and your browser type.
The information we collect automatically is used for statistical data and will not include personal information. We use this data to improve our Site and our service offerings. To the extent that you voluntarily provide personal information to us, our systems will associate the automatically collected information with your personal information.
Similar to other commercial websites, our Site utilises a standard technology called “cookies” and server logs to collect information about how our site is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our site, and the websites visited just before and just after our own, as well as your IP address.
A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a website, that site’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.
The Company reserves the right to use technological equivalents of cookies, including social media pixels. These pixels allow social media sites to track visitors to outside websites so as to tailor advertising messages users see while visiting that social media website. The Company reserves the right to use these pixels in compliance with the policies of the various social media sites.
We collect mobile phone numbers to send SMS messages. By providing your mobile number, you consent to receive SMS communications from us regarding our products, services, and promotions. We will not share your mobile number with third parties. Message frequency may vary based on your interaction with us. Message and data rates may apply. You can opt-out of receiving SMS messages at any time by following the instructions provided in the message or by contacting us directly.
Midnight Music undertakes to take all commercially reasonable steps to ensure that all personal information collected by us is accurate, up-to-date, complete and stored securely. When your personal information is no longer required for the purposes which Midnight Music uses personal information, all commercially reasonable steps will be undertaken to securely destroy that information.
We use personal information for purposes of presenting our Site and its contents to you, providing you with information, providing you with offers for products and services, providing you with information about your subscriptions and products, carrying out any contract between you and the Company, administering our business activities, providing customer service, and making available other items and services to our customers and prospective customers.
From time-to-time, we may use the information you provide to us to make you offers to purchase products and services provided by third parties in exchange for a commission to be paid to us by such third parties. Should you opt to take part in such promotions, the third parties will receive your information.
Midnight Music considers personal information we collect about you to be confidential and will not disclose such information to third parties except in the following circumstances:
Except in circumstances where access to your personal information may be denied by the Privacy Act or other Law of the State of Victoria, Australia, your personal information will be provided to you upon request.
If you are within the European Union, you are entitled to certain information and have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These include the following:
Should you have any queries in relation to the above or require further information regarding the Privacy Policy please contact us:
Midnight Music Pty Ltd
PO Box 219
Glen Waverley
Victoria 3150
AUSTRALIA
Email address: support@midnightmusic.com
