DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION: BROADENING THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE
This year, Arts Academy students streamed into Kresge Auditorium amidst the thundering sounds of the Gahu drumming tradition and learned about the history and culture behind the music.
and filmmakers are increasingly studied and presented by students. Affinity groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation, language, nationality, and religion are forming, creating safe spaces where students can feel more connected and less isolated. New DEI initiatives include designating and hiring a staff member to manage our DEI efforts, and providing training to faculty and staff. Interlochen also has been working with local leaders to emphasize the importance of DEI to our community. This includes partnering with the area’s economic development agency to create a DEI summit and meeting with the Grand Traverse County sheriff, our local community police officer, the head of Cherry Capital Airport, and representatives from the Transportation Security Administration. Interlochen’s DEI efforts support what has always been our guiding principle—the promotion of world friendship through the universal language of the arts. Together, we can unite around this core value to strengthen our community and weaken the corrosive effects of prejudice.
It was part of what often happens at Interlochen.
Interlochen recognizes the need to improve student, faculty, and staff diversity and inclusion in everything we do. Four key pillars form the foundation of our DEI efforts: Education; Transparency and Vulnerability; Accountability; Transformation. Financial support for these pillars comes from the newly created Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fund. Recent advances in student diversity include increasing the Academy student body from 21% to 28% between 2015 and 2021, and increasing domestic diversity among students attending Interlochen Arts Camp from 22% to 28% between 2016 and 2019. Thirty-seven percent of 2020 Interlochen Online participants were black, indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC). In the Academy’s curriculum, new humanities courses focus on the literature and art of diverse communities; works by BIPoC composers, playwrights,
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2021 ANNUAL REPORT
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