As the Baltimore region’s premier community school for music and dance, the Peabody Preparatory is uniquely positioned to advance the institutional goal of leading change across the performing arts industry. It is open to students of all ages and levels of ability without audition, with offerings ranging from early childhood classes for infants to the Peabody Plus program for adults.

With an aim of increasing access and making high-level music and dance training available to all, the Peabody Preparatory’s programs include:

• The Baltimore-Washington Musical Pathways (BWMP) collaborative, which seeks to diversify the landscape of the American classical music field, and unites the Peabody Institute and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with other affiliated partners in working jointly to improve pathways for student musicians from historically underrepresented communities. Underwritten by a multi-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the BWMP recruited ten students into its inaugural cohort for the 2020-21 academic year.
• Through music, mentorship, and social inclusion, the Tuned-In program offers talented and motivated middle and high school students an intense, tuition-free course of study that can lead to college and career opportunities. Growing from six students when it was established in 2007 to more than 100 this year, with an extraordinary $1.25 million gift from Johns Hopkins University Trustee William H. Miller III, Tuned-In empowers young people and widens their world through music.
• Through Peabody’s Junior Bach program, launched in 2006, Conservatory student composers offer composition lessons and mentorship to 6th- through 8th-graders at St. Ignatius Loyola Academy, an all-boys school, and the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women. The middle-schoolers develop their musical ideas during weekly after-school lessons, culminating in a concert premiering their works on Peabody’s campus each semester.
• According to Baltimore Magazine, “The tuition-free program at the Estelle Dennis/Peabody Dance Training Program for Boys has changed the lives of the boys involved.” In 2009, as a way to attract boys to the Dance program, Peabody established a scholarship program to encourage families in Baltimore who couldn’t afford the training. Many of the program’s alumni have gone on to dance company training programs or received scholarships to college dance programs.