Carnegie Hall Announces 2022–2023 Grant Recipients for PlayUSA

Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute (WMI) today announced the 2022-2023 grant recipients for PlayUSA, a program that supports community partner organizations across the country to help ensure equitable access for instrumental music education programs that serve K-12 students. For its eighth anniversary year, Carnegie Hall has selected 23 organizations, including 9 new partners-for a total of $500,000 in grants. In addition to financial support, the grantees join a nationwide network of innovative organizations committed to providing transformative music education opportunities for youth across the country.

Through PlayUSA, partner organizations receive consultation with Carnegie Hall staff, professional development for teachers, access to online resources, and monthly webinars. In addition, an intervisitation gives partners a chance to come together in one national site and learn from each other's practices. PlayUSA grants may be used to underwrite teaching fees for music instruction, purchase or rental of musical instruments, as well as instrumental repair and other programmatic costs.

To better suit the needs of a wider range of community music organizations around the country, this season PlayUSA is offering two different kinds of funding: the traditional grant, benefiting an entire organization as well as a new grant, specifically created to offer professional development to a singular stellar educator within an organization. This flexibility allows PlayUSA to reach a larger number of organizations than ever. All PlayUSA partners will discuss strategies to better facilitate and give space for peer-learning, the programmatic theme that will be explored throughout the 2022-2023 season.

"We are thrilled to welcome more organizations than ever before to the PlayUSA family, all of whom do amazing work supporting music-making in local communities across the country," said Sarah Johnson, Carnegie Hall's Chief Education Officer and Director of the Hall's Weill Music Institute. "As the needs of music organizations evolve, we know PlayUSA must do so, and this new granting structure helps to better serve a wider range of partners. PlayUSA has built a robust and diverse national network of leaders in the music education field, and we look forward to collaborating and learning from new and returning partners in our eighth anniversary season, reaching more young people than ever before."

In the 2021-2022 season, the current cohort of PlayUSA partners have worked on a season-long creative learning project alongside the members of PUBLIQuartet-PlayUSA's inaugural ensemble-in-residence- entitled Reflections on Resilience. This project charged partners to gather biographical narratives from the young musicians they serve and collect their artistic responses to living history. Partners will share their culminating projects during the PlayUSA national convening from June 27-29 at Carnegie Hall, the first time partners have been able to convene together in-person since 2019.