We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Leigh Ann Cannady. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Leigh Ann below.

Alright, Leigh Ann thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

The mission of Forsyth Academy of Performing Arts is to foster a creative, safe, professional environment for students to develop skills essential to the performing arts and beyond. We developed that mission statement before we ever opened our doors to the public and it remains the heartbeat of what we do every day. In our industry of performing arts, there is often an assumption that if students don’t go on to pursue the arts professionally, we haven’t been successful. I simply don’t agree. The performing arts are especially suited for providing opportunities for children and young adults to develop qualities that will serve them well no matter what path they pursue professionally. The performing arts provides opportunities to learn teamwork, individual responsibility, empathy, listening skills, public speaking skills, courage and confidence. I can’t think of any other activity that provides so many opportunities for personal development in so many areas all in one place. Our students have gone on to work in the business world for companies like Bank of America, they’ve gone on to law school, they’re working in medicine…and each of them would tell you that participating in the arts contributed to their success in a meaningful way.

Leigh Ann, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I founded Forsyth Academy of Performing Arts (FAPA) in 2013. I had been working as a freelance musical director, musician, arranger and vocal coach for many years and I was consistently asked where my students could go to participate in a production or take a class in acting or musical theater. There weren’t any children’s theaters or acting schools in our area, so I never had a very good answer. I knew that I had a large network of really incredible teachers and artists that would love to provide those types of opportunities to our local kids and from there, FAPA was born. I didn’t know a thing about running a business: I didn’t know an income statement from a balance sheet, so the learning curve was steep, but I didn’t mind asking lots of questions of everyone I knew who had more experience than I was and I learned quickly. FAPA started with such an incredible team of teachers and so many amazing families right from the beginning and since that time, we’ve grown from a team of about 4-6 teachers and 35 students to a team of around 14 staff and well over 400 that join us every week for classes and rehearsals.

I learned along the way that I really enjoyed the business side of our operation, so I’ve also begun working as a speaker, consultant and coach for other creative businesses. I love working with other creatives to help them learn how to manage their overall businesses through strategy and business plan development as well as finding ways to run their day to day operations efficiently. I love being able to cross both sides of my brain: the creative and the analytical, to help other creatives find a path to success!

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Working with our team is my absolute favorite part of FAPA. Over the years we have built an absolutely incredible team of talented, positive, extremely well qualified leaders who serve our families well every single day. We have almost no turnover and many of our staff have been working with us since we first opened our doors ten years ago. I think the most important aspect of managing a team begins at the hiring process. We hire extremely slowly…we typically try to have staff come in and join us while assisting in a short term experience like a summer camp before we officially bring them onto the team in any long term capacity. Chemistry is extremely important to us and we want to make sure that new people “fit” before we bring them on permanently. I also tend to follow a protocol I call “hiring backwards”. I look for really well qualified people who fit in well with our team and THEN I find a place for them to work with us. I find that waiting until I’m desperate for someone to fill a position means that I don’t hire as well as I do when I can bring the right person onto the team and then find gaps for them to fill. This means that historically we may not have grown as quickly as we could have if we hired faster, but I think the overall experience for our clients is MUCH better and worth the wait. It also means our current employees have a chance to get to know new potential team members and we can see the overall chemistry in our organization. Giving the current team a chance to get to know potential new hires allows them to have a voice in the process, which I think contributes to our team’s high morale.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

2020 challenged all small businesses, but arguably none more than the live event and venue sectors. Upon the announcement of the shutdown of local schools, FAPA pivoted quickly and immediately moved all classes and production rehearsals online. We stayed online, utilizing Zoom throughout the spring, continuing to offer programming for the kids to connect and stay engaged.

Once we realized that being together in person wasn’t going to come back for an extended period of time, we adapted once again, providing online content (both paid and free) to students locally and also as far away as New England and Colorado. We offered virtual productions where kids rehearsed online, recorded their portions of the productions independently and then we edited those into fully filmed online musicals and plays. It was an indescribable challenge, but we were committed to continuing to give kids the opportunity to connect together. Once we were able to get back in our building, we initially offered smaller productions for the students who felt comfortable in person utilizing limited seating in our facility and enhanced cleaning procedures and we continued online programming for students who didn’t yet feel comfortable joining us in person. Throughout 2021 we offered continual opportunities for even our in person students to join their classes and rehearsals via Zoom if they felt they had been exposed or were feeling under the weather. Utilizing all of these measures, only once did we have to reschedule a class due to a potential Covid exposure.

Throughout 2021 we slowly but surely began allowing larger audiences into our building and began reopening our lobby for parents. While our deliverables themselves have gotten mostly back to normal, what changed the most for FAPA was our families’ trust in us. 2020 gave them a chance to see that we were truly concerned more about the kids’ well being than our own bottom line. Because our team rallied so quickly together, we were able to work together to secure several means of government relief like the PPP loans in order to ensure that we had the margin to allow our families, many of whom were in financial distress at the time, to pay what they could and not lose any of their kids’ classes or productions. We also kept the promise to our students whose productions were cancelled in Spring 2020 that we would give them the opportunity to complete those shows. It took all year, but by the time August 2020 rolled around and schools were opening back up, we invited the kids into the building to perform their shows (that they had rehearsed online throughout the summer) to film their productions since we still weren’t sure we were comfortable with full audiences back in the building at that point. The kids came in, rehearsed and filmed all in one afternoon and then they went out into the parking lot and performed one musical number outside for the friends and family that could be there. We wanted the kids to still have the thrill of a live audience’s applause! We shared those recordings with parents and families and it gave the kids who had lost SO much the opportunity to actually feel like they got to finish something. We found that our families were immeasurably grateful. Fun fact: We rehearsed, performed, filmed and edited FOURTEEN full productions in one week that summer!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.forsythperforms.com and www.leighanncannady.com
• Instagram: @forsythperforms and @leighanncannady
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/forsythapa and www.facebook.com/leighannshawmusic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leighanncannady/