The Score | Orchestras by the Numbers: Education and Community Engagement

As today’s orchestras strive to strengthen their engagement with the cities and communities they serve, their education and community engagement (EdCE) programming is taking center stage. An upcoming report from the League of American Orchestras demonstrates the impressive scale of this work: the 85 professional orchestras surveyed provided over 18,000 EdCE sessions to over 2 million participants during the 2013-14 season alone. The scale of this work is matched by an ever-increasing breadth of programming, with only one in four EdCE sessions now taking the form of a traditional concert, and a wide range of other, hands-on learning opportunities. The report details many other essential insights, including a racial/ethnic breakdown of the estimated 37 percent of EdCE program participants engaged from under-represented communities. It is available for free from the Knowledge Center at americanorchestras.org.