Our Momentum: Progress to Date

As a central focus of Boston Conservatory’s Strategic Direction for 2020 to 2025, the Conservatory has developed an interlocking and proactive set of strategies and initiatives to address its diversity and racial justice goals. Since launching its Strategic Direction in fall 2019, Boston Conservatory has aligned enrollment, financial, and advancement strategies in support of this vision, and is allocating resources—both personnel and financial—toward achieving these goals.

Areas of focus include:

student, faculty, and staff recruitment and retention;
community training, education, and dialogue;
academic innovation, including curricular reinvention, refreshed performance programming, diverse guest artist engagement, and global partnerships;
fundraising to support student scholarship and diversity initiatives; and
support resources for students.

Click the expandable boxes below to explore this work and see our momentum to date.

Student, Faculty, and Staff Recruitment

Community Training, Education, and Dialogue

Educational Resources:

The Berklee Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion established 12 regularly available professional training opportunities to promote diversity and inclusion education across the community, with opportunities to request tailored workshops and resources for individuals and departments.
Boston Conservatory’s Alphin Alphin Library created a Diversity and Inclusion Book Corner, which is accessible to all faculty, staff, and students.
Junetheeth was established as a Berklee-wide day of reflection, education, discussion, and personal goal-setting.

Workshops and Training:

Boston Conservatory faculty, staff, and executive leaders regularly attend diversity and inclusion-focused professional development workshops and training offered by the Berklee Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Human Resources. Topics range from reducing implicit bias in the hiring process to navigating challenging moments across differences.
All Boston Conservatory students undergo mandatory diversity and inclusion training and dialogue at orientation and beyond.
The Dance Division prioritized division-wide training on diversity, equity, and inclusion:
- Chair of Dance Mila Thigpen led a cultural humility faculty training, which discussed white privilege, unconscious bias, and microaggressions as contributors to inequitable education in dance.
- Urban Bush Women Dance Company presented a workshop to Boston Conservatory dance faculty members titled EBX: Entering, Building and Exiting Community. The workshop focused on embodying effective leadership practices that strengthen and develop participant understanding of community engagement.
The Music Division focused efforts on diversity training and hiring:
- Partnered with the Berklee Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to facilitate Music Division staff and faculty training.
- Required all music faculty hiring search committees to undergo diversity training in collaboration with the Berklee Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Human Resources. This work has led to the successful hiring of esteemed artists Vimbayi Kaziboni (conducting), Patrice Jackson-Tilghman (cello), Charles Overton (harp), Saul Bitran (violin), and more.
The Theater Division prioritized division-wide training on diversity, equity, and inclusion:
- Partnered with the Berklee Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to facilitate Theater Division staff and faculty training.
- All Theater Division faculty participated in a mandatory Conscientious Theater/Anti-Racist Theater training with Nicole Brewer, whose work exposes the shape-shifting quality of racism in theater, and provides a framework for creating a fully inclusive and anti-racist theater organizational culture through the use of conscientious theater training.
- Introduced formal diversity and inclusion training for all first-year musical theater students.
- Introduced Changing the Script, a community dialogue series on topics such as race, representation and casting, fighting racism onstage and off, intimacy onstage and in the classroom, and LGBTQ+ lives on stage
- Amplified community resources for diversity, equity, and inclusion through biweekly divisional newsletter promoting links to helpful articles and information on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Dialogues and Advisory Groups:

In 2019, established the Executive Director’s Student Advisory Council (EDSAC), a student advisory group that collaborates with the Conservatory’s executive director on diversity initiatives.
In 2020, established the Executive Director’s Faculty Advisory Council (EDFAC), a faculty advisory group that collaborates with the Conservatory’s executive director on diversity initiatives.

Academic Innovation: Curricular Reinvention

Initiated a Conservatory-wide curriculum review and reinvention, and continued consultation with diversity professionals to identify ways to enhance art-based diversity and inclusion teachings.

Dance Division Curricular Innovation:

Retitled courses, such as those in ballet technique, to remove gendered language and convey course availability to all students, regardless of gender identity; and implemented new pedagogical approaches to support these changes.
Revision of the Conservatory’s Dance Core Movement curriculum, which previously centered on ballet and modern dance, to include movement forms with origins in the traditions of the African Diaspora. These newly required courses include African Dance, Hip Hop, Jazzdance, and Salsa (previously offered as electives).
Added new dance academic courses that decenter Western classicism and offer students an expanded understanding of dance as an expression of culture, of global aesthetic frameworks, and of dance as a vehicle for social change. These include:
- The Black Aesthetic in American Modern Dance
- Dance and Socio-Political Activism
- Decolonizing Ballet
- History of Hip-Hop
- Introduction to Iconic Dance: An Analysis of Urban Movement and Culture

Music Division Curricular Innovation:

In 2019, launched the Core Studies Focus Group tasked with diversifying the Music Division’s foundational curriculum. Their ongoing work will result in a revamping of the Music Division’s curricular structure to enable a more broad exploration of content, including:
- Black composers and performers
- Non-Western forms
- Non-traditional musical language
- Methods of analysis
- Expanded music history and theory course offerings:
- Uncultured Opera: Realism/Cultural ‘Other’
- The Refugee Voice in the 19th and 20th Centuries
- Free Jazz and Avant-Garde Improvisation
- Foundations for Instrumental Studies students, which prepares first-year students for the rigorous work at the conservatory, ensuring equity within the ensembles experiences

Theater Division Curricular Innovation:

Formally refocused divisional mission on inclusive teaching practices and celebrating diverse voices, creating a new divisional guiding statement and manifesto.
Implemented division-wide community work agreement and standards and practices.
Paired faculty with Center of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion representatives to observe classes and assist with meaningful revision of theater curriculum.
Mandated that at least 50 percent of material used in academic classes be written by underrepresented voices.
Updated syllabus template to include standards and practices for engaging with materials outside of one’s own identity and background.
Added new theater courses to generate cultural awareness and enrich artistic dialogues:
- Actor’s Toolkit, providing diversity, equity, and inclusion training to first-year students
- African Dance
- Contemporary Asian American Plays
- Hip-Hop Dance
- Latinx Theater
- Race, Identity, and Performance

Academic Innovation: Performances and Guest Artists

Performances:

In 2018, Boston Conservatory mandated that all performance programming include contemporary works and works by underrepresented artists to ensure more diverse programming that pushes the boundaries of typical conservatory repertoire. Examples include:
- contraBAND: African Voices in Contemporary Music: Featuring contemporary works by African composers, this concert marked the Western debut of some works on the program. Directed by Zimbabwean conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni.
- Boston Conservatory Orchestra with Silkroad: Beginning in 2018, Boston Conservatory began a tradition of presenting an annual orchestra concert with artists from Silkroad, the Grammy Award–winning, global organization founded by Yo-Yo Ma.
- Latin American Song Project: An annual concert tradition celebrating students’ Latin ancestry and heritage, created in 2018 by students Laura Virginia Pernas Rodriguez (B.M. ’20, voice) and Felix Aguilar Tomlinson (B.M. ’20, voice).
- Spirituals: A Tribute to Robert Honeysucker: An annual concert of spirituals to commemorate the late voice faculty member Robert Honeysucker during Black History Month, presented by the Black Student Alliance.
- Dance Division mainstage concerts: The Conservatory's annual fall (From the Ground Up) and spring (Limitless) dance concerts feature new works as well as iconic repertory created by world-renowned choreographers reflecting a diversity of experience and aesthetics.
- Can't Keep Quiet: A Concert Celebrating Womxn Composers and Lyricists: This original theater revue celebrated women’s often unsung contributions to Broadway and the American musical, showing pioneering songwriters of the last 50 years.
Center Stage: Launched Boston Conservatory at Berklee Center Stage, an annual collection of eight curated performances, selected from the school’s 700-plus performance season. Center Stage highlights works that are innovative, elevate underrepresented voices, or celebrate diverse performers or artistic teams. Read about the most recent Center Stage collection (2019–2020).
Casting Policies: The Theater Division implemented a new inclusive casting policy for all division-related productions, developed in partnership with the Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Guest Artists:

Prioritized engagement of diverse guest artist lineups across all three divisions. These guest artists hold either short- or long-term residencies at Boston Conservatory, teaching, creating, or performing with students. Recent guest artist include:
- Dance: Otis Sallid, Jennifer Archibald, Korhan Basaran, Roderick George, Joseph Toonga, Dam Van Huynh, Maleek Washington, Key'aira Lockett, Juel D. Lane, Bradley Shelver, Babatunji Johnson, Camille A. Brown, Victor Quijada, Gustavo Sansano, William Isaac, Martha Nichols, Jarek Cemerek, Chung-Fu Chang
- Music: Julia Bullock, Awadagin Pratt, Seth Parker Woods, Ashleigh Gordon, Haruka Fujii, James Lee, III, Osvaldo Golijov, Marcus Thompson, Richard Kelley, Thomas Mesa, Stewart Goodyear
- Theater: Pascale Florestal, Lisa Yuen, Michael J. Bobbitt, Dawn Simmons, De’Lon Grant, Aaron Michael Ray

Fall Semester Update

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Student, Faculty, and Staff Recruitment

Students:

Staffing:

Faculty:

Community Training, Education, and Dialogue

Educational Resources:

Workshops and Training:

Dialogues and Advisory Groups:

Academic Innovation: Curricular Reinvention

Dance Division Curricular Innovation:

Music Division Curricular Innovation:

Theater Division Curricular Innovation:

Academic Innovation: Performances and Guest Artists

Performances:

Guest Artists:

Academic Innovation: Global Partnerships and Learning Opportunities

Student Scholarship Support and Philanthropy

Student Engagement

Thought Leadership

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