Building a Musical Legacy beyond the Classroom

K-12 STEAM education

City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

According to a report by the L.A. County Arts Education Collective, less than 38% of students in kindergarten through fifth grade have access to music education through their schools. Of the 13 public K-12 schools closest to Neighborhood Music School (NMS) in Boyle Heights, only six of them offer music instruction. This largely impacts Hispanic and Latino resident who make up 93% of the Boyle Heights community. Often when the underrepresented individuals do gain access to music, the style of music and mentors from whom they learn are not representative of their own personal interests or cultural backgrounds. Conversations with students and families at Neighborhood Music School have also revealed that students are often not sure how to apply their education to community-based and professional musical settings.These issues compounded, according to a 2023 report by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, lead to lack of diverse representation and sense of inclusion in the music industry.

Our project aims to address these issues by developing a free workshops series, called the “Legacy Salon,” in which students from NMS can see professional musicians in action, collaborate with musical guests and students, and gain the skills and inspiration needed to succeed in engaging with music outside of their music lessons. The program will engage local teaching artists (from NMS and the broader Los Angeles community) who are working as professional musicians and share characteristics with our current student body (e.g. folks from immigrant families, individuals with physical disabilities, English as second language learners, etc.). NMS will host one two-hour “Legacy Series” per month, featuring one to two teaching artists and engaging students ages, 5 to 18 years. During the workshops, teaching artists will share their cultural and/or personal background and how that has influenced their work, showcase their musical expertise through performance, and facilitate hands-on musical exercises in which students can apply what they are learning in their music lessons. Each session will end with an open community conversation focused on sharing opportunities for students to engage with music in community-based or professional settings. Given the wide age range of our students, workshops will be multi-faceted in the sense that one teaching artist may work with a younger group of students (ages 5-9) while another teaching artist works with an older group (ages 10-18).

In the first year, our program will guide students from a young age in building the inspiration, knowledge, and resources needed to succeed in community and/or professional music spaces. Furthermore, by centering teaching artists from Los Angeles County who identify with historically underrepresented groups, we will be reinvesting into our community by supporting local musicians, providing students opportunities to collaborate with these artists, and preparing students to eventually serve as professional or community musicians themselves. Our longer-term vision is to create a self-sustaining program in which current students will become presenting artists and mentors for students of the next generation. We also plan to develop a mentorship program in which students can shadow guest artists on a regular basis, further preparing students to reach their professional musical goals.