Unless you are an aficionado of classical music, or you happen to live in the metro area, the odds are good that you do not know much about the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. For those of you who are not familiar with the organization here is a look at how they choose to describe themselves, “The mission of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra is to inspire, entertain, educate and challenge through innovative programs and symphonic music performed at the highest artistic level.”

Well it looks like with the hard times the arts are starting to suffer. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra has chosen to let go of six of its workers in order to make ends meet. The classical music organization is going through some serious and ongoing restructuring efforts that are designed to help reduce costs, though it is not clear at the current moment if these will be the only layoffs in the plan, or if more are coming in order to set the budget to right.

Interestingly enough the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra did not put out a release with any information about the job cuts they were making. Instead the most recent release put out is about the newest showing, “The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Conductor David Glover welcome delegations from Indianapolis’ sister cities from Europe, Asia and South America with a musical salute to their homelands in a colorful classical program titled ISO Goes Global – The Music of Our Sister Cities Friday and Saturday, July 13 and 14, at 8 p.m. at the Conner Prairie Amphitheater. As an added treat, the fireworks that were postponed from the July 2-4 program tentatively have been rescheduled for these concerts, subject to the status of the burning ban in Fishers and weather conditions.”

The lack of information about the job cuts means that we have little in the way of information about what exactly is going on with the job cuts. We do not know exactly what kind of workers have gotten the boot, we do not know what kind of a severance, if any, will be given to the workers who are going to be impacted by the cuts and we do not know if the organization is going to help them with placement services.

Sadly, this is not the first time that culture has taken a hit in the current economy. Many people are finding that there is just no money to keep them in their current jobs. Some of you may recall our earlier coverage of job cuts to the BBC, “As part of a restructuring plan, British Broadcasting Corporation, the major public broadcaster in the UK, announced that it will slash about 360 positions at its online operations. The company officials said that they will reorganize BBC Online to achieve a much clearer digital agenda to better service its clients this year. The cuts are also triggered by the company’s plan to cut its budget for its online unit by a quarter, which will be $165 million for 2013-2014, down from $219 million in 2010.”