The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra has been awarded a $19,500 grant from the League of American Orchestras to strengthen its understanding of equity, diversity and inclusion and to help transform its organizational culture, it was announced Friday.
Given to just 25 orchestras nationwide, the one-year grants comprise the final round of the Catalyst Fund, the league’s three-year, $2.1 million grant-making program, made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with additional support from the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation.
“It is an honor for LACO to receive this grant and the support of our colleagues from the League of American Orchestras, and we look forward to working together with them to build a bright and inclusive future for classical music,” said LACO Executive Director Ben Cadwallader.
“Although excellence is only possible through diversity, classical music has a history of excluding diverse voices from our stages, orchestras, staffs and board rooms,” he said. “At LACO, we’ve made great strides in recent years toward becoming an organization that is inclusive, diverse and welcoming of all identities; this wonderfully generous grant from the League is both a recognition of what we’ve accomplished, and an acknowledgement of the magnitude of the work ahead of us.”
LACO will utilize the grant to help support a consulting project with the Aspen Leadership Group that will help the orchestra transform existing and new diversity initiatives into a comprehensive, sustainable plan with clearly defined outcomes and accountability measures, Cadwwallader said.
Aspen is meeting with board members, orchestra, advisory committees, staff and key community partners to create a 360-degree look at LACO’s existing culture and how to map its future path.
“American orchestras have made a strong commitment to embrace equity, diversity and inclusion and reverse decades of inequity on stage and off — an imperative made even more urgent by the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on communities of color,” said Simon Woods, the league’s president and CEO.
“This is a long-term journey, but it starts with taking immediate action and creating organizational momentum,” he said. “We’re grateful for The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s long-standing support for the orchestral field, and for the strategic vision that has allowed this group of orchestras to model what change looks like for our entire field through their Catalyst Fund grants.”