Funding & Support

I met Natalia García de Castro, Executive Director of the Siemens Colombia Foundation, one rainy morning in Bogota in March 2019. On that day, we began to work together to design innovative proposals in favor of children and young people who see in music an option for dignifying their existence.

This year, the fifteen organizations supported by PlayUSA, a national grant-making initiative of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, are focusing on how to maximize their students’ artistic potential while building environments centered on trust and creativity.

In 2015, the Mass Cultural Council created the SerHacer program, a granting opportunity focused on intensive, ensemble-based music programs that use music as a vehicle for youth development and social change. Inspired by the work of El Sistema, the program supports a wide variety of in-school and community organizations, to expand access to social and artistic music-making opportunities.

A model to adopt?  This was the first year of the L.A. Orchestra Fellowship, a two-year intensive for musicians who play violin, viola and cello.

Students from Ghetto Classics in Nairobi have created a new music video that you can view below. For this video, students partnered with SAWA, an organization that partners with local Kenyan women to make beaded decorations for technology like headphones (which can be seen in the film). 

The Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) with The Klarman Family Foundation kick off the second cohort of the META Fellowship this month.  The term stands for Music Educators and Teaching Artists, and it is a two year professional development program for about 60 Fellows, including faculty from Sistema-inspired programs in the state.

How do you design, fund, and lead a great community arts project?  If you live in New Zealand, or want to learn from its example, you now have good answers.

For Sistema teenagers, one of the hurdles to exploring the arts is the cost of tickets.  The French Ministry of Culture has rolled out a new multi-million Euro program intended to reduce that barrier for 18-year-olds across the country.

In the June 2018 issue of The World Ensemble, we enthusiastically reported that Sistema Toronto had been granted $500,000 by the Ontario provincial government as part of a significant new investment in arts education.

Thirteen U.S. El Sistema-inspired programs have been accepted (after a competitive application
process) into El Sistema USA’s PRESTO grant program, which provides group learning, mentorship, and funding to programs in their first five years.