NEA Awards Grant to Fund Study of How Musical Theater Helps Kids Understand How Money Works
Thursday, February 1st, 2024
The Department of Creative Arts at Agnes Scott College is excited to announce that it has been awarded one of 20 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Research Grants in the Arts to study the effects of a musical theater production on the financial literacy of elementary school children.
The study focuses on the adaptation of key concepts about money shared in “Million Bazillion,” a podcast produced by American Public Media’s Marketplace, whose mission is to raise the economic intelligence of the country. The content from the podcast will creatively transform into messaging and narrative for the theater production, a key aspect of the research. Marketplace’s nationally syndicated daily business news and economics broadcast is heard by more than 11 million listeners on public radio stations throughout the U.S.
The study focuses on the adaptation of key concepts about money shared in “Million Bazillion,” a podcast produced by American Public Media’s Marketplace, whose mission is to raise the economic intelligence of the country. The content from the podcast will creatively transform into messaging and narrative for the theater production, a key aspect of the research. Marketplace’s nationally syndicated daily business news and economics broadcast is heard by more than 11 million listeners on public radio stations throughout the U.S.
Link to the event here: https://calendar.agnesscott.edu/event/million_bazillion_the_musical
“It’s all very exciting!” Bridget Bodnar, the co-host of the “Million Bazillion” podcast and a senior producer for Marketplace notes. The collaboration between theater professor Toby Emert, who wrote and will direct the musical and who is overseeing the research project, and Bodnar began in the summer of 2021 when Emert first had the idea to translate segments from the podcast for the stage.
“I had wanted to develop a show for young audiences that used theater to help them understand important ideas, but I hadn’t considered working on a play about money and the economy until I started listening to the podcast,” Toby Emert explains. “That could be a fun challenge, I thought—to develop a musical that teaches kids about financial concepts and instills a healthy relationship with money early on.”
A world-premiere workshop production of “Million Bazillion: the Musical” will open in the Winter Theater on the campus of Agnes Scott College on February 22, 2024 with an 11AM performance specifically for local students. Additional performances will be on Friday, 2/23, at 7PM, on Saturday, 2/24 at 11AM and 2PM, and on Sunday, 2/25, at 2PM. The show features a series of interrelated scenes in which four “big kids” are learning about money and singing songs such as “Dollar Scholar” and “The Rewind Song.” Each song in the show heightens the information the characters—and the audience—are learning and aims to inspire an ongoing curiosity to achieve financial literacy.
Emert and psychology professor Bonnie Perdue have designed their study to investigate the success of the musical in conveying the key concepts about money to the audience. They hypothesize that arts engagement will have positive effects on children’s comprehension and that the musical presentation of the information will resonate differently and prove to be more effective than a classroom lesson about the same content.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), established in Congress in 1965, is an independent federal agency that is the largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide and a catalyst of public and private support for the arts. By advancing equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, the NEA fosters and sustains an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States.
“I had wanted to develop a show for young audiences that used theater to help them understand important ideas, but I hadn’t considered working on a play about money and the economy until I started listening to the podcast,” Toby Emert explains. “That could be a fun challenge, I thought—to develop a musical that teaches kids about financial concepts and instills a healthy relationship with money early on.”
A world-premiere workshop production of “Million Bazillion: the Musical” will open in the Winter Theater on the campus of Agnes Scott College on February 22, 2024 with an 11AM performance specifically for local students. Additional performances will be on Friday, 2/23, at 7PM, on Saturday, 2/24 at 11AM and 2PM, and on Sunday, 2/25, at 2PM. The show features a series of interrelated scenes in which four “big kids” are learning about money and singing songs such as “Dollar Scholar” and “The Rewind Song.” Each song in the show heightens the information the characters—and the audience—are learning and aims to inspire an ongoing curiosity to achieve financial literacy.
Emert and psychology professor Bonnie Perdue have designed their study to investigate the success of the musical in conveying the key concepts about money to the audience. They hypothesize that arts engagement will have positive effects on children’s comprehension and that the musical presentation of the information will resonate differently and prove to be more effective than a classroom lesson about the same content.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), established in Congress in 1965, is an independent federal agency that is the largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide and a catalyst of public and private support for the arts. By advancing equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, the NEA fosters and sustains an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States.
