Giving diverse talent the chance to shine.

* and everything else

Too many young people don’t get a chance to develop and demonstrate their talent. This gap in representation in leadership and at top institutions silences diverse voices, great ideas, and productive dialogue. It isn’t fair or creative, and it’s bad for the world.

Ilumina provides access to world-class opportunity for talented young musicians from diverse and less-advantaged backgrounds, and builds lasting relationships between artists and marginalized communities.

We’re working for a future where every talented young person has a chance to become a leader, where concert halls represent the vibrant diversity of the world, and where all communities have access to music education and live performance.

Ilumina was founded in São Paulo in 2015 by American violist Jennifer Stumm. What began as a small musical talent development project on a farm has grown in six years to include hundreds of young musicians from South America and leading international artists from around the world, a renowned festival giving access to live music to thousands each year, social impact initiatives of quality and depth and a model of opportunity development of remarkable power. Almost 60% of Ilumina Young Artists have gone on to study at top-level universities and conservatories around the world and of those, 98% were accepted to their first-choice institution. Ilumina and its collective of artists from diverse social realities now performs on major stages around the world, leads educational residencies and continues to fight for equity and representation in leadership, on and off stage. Jennifer is regularly invited to speak about the Ilumina model of talent development, at NASA’s Cross-Industry Innovation Summit, at the Ecosystems 2030 Summit and for Innovation, Technology and Education sector institutions around the world.

Around the world top-level training opportunities exist in every field, where deep personal investment and exclusive access to decision-makers train next generation leaders. These are overwhelmingly comprised by young people with privilege.

Ilumina works to overcome systemic barriers to world class training and leadership opportunity for talented musicians from South America and other places around the world. A majority of these musicians come from low income brackets and socially-focused music programs, which lack the resources to help highly talented students advance to the level career their talent might deserve. They struggle to access and finance further study.

Through our festival, education and entrepreneurship projects, and mentorship structure, we identify and support young talent to access and finance top level music education around the world, develop professional opportunity and build entrepreneurial skills and projects which can then reflect value back to their communities.

Ilumina’s model is to invest deep in individuals who have extraordinary potential to scale that investment forward. The results are staggering. In just six years close to 60% of the young musicians Ilumina has worked with have gone on to access top-level university training. Of those, 98% who applied were accepted to their first-choice institution.

Ilumina’s powerful artistic projects unite a collective musicians from diverse backgrounds around the world and inspire new work. We believe that diversity and equity are values that should generate new energy on stage— visibly and audibly— and that we should expect to make better and more innovative work when we include more voices. Our family of artists commit together to equity in how we connect with audiences, and where we play. We believe all communities deserve access to committed live performance, whether at the sawmill on our festival coffee farm or in the most famous concert halls of the world.

Ilumina works with communities to bring equity of access to music education and live performance for all people, with a focus on agricultural regions and the peripheries of cities where live performance is often rare or non-existent. Our community work is holistic—we’re working to develop an ecosystem where artists from communities receive investment, where we perform consistently in those communities, and where young artists who receive investment reinvest that knowledge and impact their communities into the future.

We also support the international social music sector, through on-site educational residencies and curriculum assistance, sharing the Ilumina deep-investment model via hands-on musical experiences.

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