Orchestrating Diversity: Community Engagement and Cultural Sensitivity in Concert Programming

By Sepehr Pirasteh, Graduate Music Fellow  In the ever-evolving landscape of the music field, there’s a growing recognition of the need to diversify concert programs and decolonize our musical repertoire. But how can we effectively navigate this complex terrain? Community engagement emerges as a pivotal strategy in this endeavor. The Presser Foundation hosted a Next…

An Eye-Opening Summer at The Presser Foundation

Image: Claire Moustafellos works on a project for the Foundation during her summer internship.  By Claire Moustafellos What piqued my interest when applying to and interviewing for The Presser Foundation Internship, was the strong focus surrounding diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA). What I didn’t realize when going through this process, was that I would…

Summer Through a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Lens

Image: Cassandra (Cassie) Slade works on a project for the Foundation during her summer internship.  By Cassandra Slade Toward the end of my junior year at Temple University, I began to explore various options for how I would spend my summer. In an effort to pursue my interest in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and…

Integrating DEI Into Your Board

By Abby Rolland Recently, The Presser Foundation hosted the fourth iteration of its virtual Next Movement event series, this time focusing on (Nonprofit) Boards & DEI. The Foundation plans to host three Next Movement events every year, and at least one of those each year will focus on topics around DEI (August 2021 spotlighted four partner…

Centering Equity

By Abby Rolland On May 25, 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, George Floyd was murdered by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While this was not the first (nor unfortunately, the last) brutal murder of an unarmed BIPOC man or woman, it began a national reckoning with systemic racial injustices that have…