Youth Engagement – Chapter 1: Why Youth Engagement?

There are three key reasons why youth engagement is central to the future of orchestras. First, it’s a moral imperative to provide young people with equitable engagement with the orchestral art form. “We’re working with an education system that was not designed for all young people to have equitable resources,” notes Gary Padmore, Vice President, Education and Community Engagement at the New York Philharmonic. “Our work is not just supplementing but truly creating awareness of systemic issues and how they can change.”

Second, it’s a creative imperative. Ultimately, this is about building a future stronger and more dynamic than our present. How can we give youth the chance to create their own emotional connection to orchestral music? How can youth help us build the future of our art?

Third, it’s a business imperative: American orchestras need young people representing the full diversity of all Americans. Plenty of young people are clamoring to get involved as players, staff, audience, and donors, inspired to help us evolve and remain relevant from within.

There is strong market demand for orchestra performances featuring young musicians. In fact, across both classical and pops audiences, two thirds of all ticket buyers say they would like to see young, local musicians regularly performing on stage with the orchestra, regardless of whether they attend classical or pops performances. Find out more from the League’s on-demand webinar reporting on WolfBrown’s Audience Tastes and Preferences Survey, produced in partnership with the League.

A 2023 survey of over 500 young classical musicians from about 30 youth orchestras and college music programs paints a telling portrait of Gen Z’s most orchestra-oriented members. Lindsey Nova, Executive Director of Three Rivers Young People’s Orchestras in Pittsburgh, and Sonja Thoms, Executive Director of the Wheeling Symphony in West Virginia and Founder of the next-generation orchestra leadership organization OrchestraCareers.com, designed the survey and presented results at the 2023 National Conference of the League of American Orchestras.

Key findings are promising: two-thirds of respondents had interest in or a primary goal of becoming a professional musician, just under half had interest in or the goal of becoming orchestra staff, and almost all aimed to become audience members and donors. But the open-ended responses offer critiques. Many called for professional and community orchestras to do more to diversify repertoire, orchestra musicians, and guest artists, and to communicate more effectively with younger people.

Reflecting on the survey, Nova urges orchestras to take young people seriously. “It’s such a no-brainer. Get them in early and you’ll have them forever.” While Nova and Thoms’ survey results can’t be analyzed by racial/ethnic group, there are signs that students from all backgrounds are not yet equally bought in. Young BIPOC musicians in the orchestra program at the Talent Unlimited Performing Arts High School in New York City recently talked with our co-author Megan Delatour, director of the program and an alumna of the League’s Essentials of Orchestra Management Program. Did the young musicians want to be in a major U.S. orchestra one day? Based on what they’d seen, their answer was no: they did not feel seen by these institutions. Delatour reported the students’ insights to the League of American Orchestras board. The students’ response illustrates that, as with all equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) work, authentic and inclusive youth engagement takes humility, focused effort, and field-wide efforts to address under-representation and exclusion.

“If you can pause long enough to hear where [young people] are genuinely at, what they are excited by and concerned about, what they imagine for their own lives, you can discover overlap. Finding shared interests, experimenting with young people, discovering areas of your own interest that resonate with genuine interest of young people—that’s ethical and productive.”

Eric Booth, Author, Consultant, Arts Learning Program Designer

Photo: A counselor and two students perform together at a Pacific Symphony arts-X-press program concert. Credit: Adam Kirchoff