University Musical Society

One of the oldest performing arts presenters in the country, University Musical Society (UMS) is committed to connecting audiences with performing artists from around the world in uncommon and engaging experiences. With a program steeped in music, dance, and theater, UMS contributes to a vibrant cultural community by presenting approximately 40-70 performances, over 100 free educational activities, and a wide array of digital programs each season. UMS also commissions new work, sponsors artist residencies, and organizes collaborative projects with local, national, and international partners. While proudly affiliated with the University of Michigan and housed on the U-M campus, UMS is a separate organization that supports itself from ticket sales, grants, contributions, and endowment income.

To foster a culture of creativity that transforms the human condition.

Goal One: Present performances, produce new works, and offer public programming, working toward deepening and broadening UMS’s focus on community partnerships, geographical reach, and accessibility programs.

Goal Two: Explore options for new facilities and locations, across a wide geographic region, to serve as destinations for performance and public programs and to amplify our role as a cultural resource/partner.

Goal Three: Ensure the future artistic and organizational health of UMS by committing, in philosophy and through action, to becoming a more antiracist, diverse, inclusive, accessible, and equitable organization.

The entire UMS staff worked with a consultant in 2020-2021 on antiracism training, participating in learning sessions and exploring an adaptive leadership approach to building antiracist practices that would disrupt our participation in systemic racism. From these workshops, UMS developed three staff-led “learning projects” that will continue to guide our work in this area. One of these was the creation of two new "co-leader" staff roles, where two staff members who are not currently in leadership positions join leadership group meetings -- as full participants -- and serve as a communication conduit between leadership and non-leadership staff members, thereby helping to dismantle hierarchical, white supremacy culture within the organization. Two staff members were elected by their peers and began in their roles in January 2022. They are paid a stipend for their work and commit to their roles for one year, when new co-leaders will be elected.

For the first time since our founding in 1879, UMS did not present any live, indoor concert performances in the 2020/21 season — but our impact on the community continued through an expansion of digital programming that reached audiences all over the world. As a lockdown that we initially thought might last a month extended into six months, and ultimately an entire season, we moved from uncertainty to fortitude, from disbelief to resilience, and from disruption to innovation and evolution. Despite the many changes in 2020/21, we remained successful in fulfilling our mission of connecting audiences and artists in uncommon and engaging experiences and, with all of our digital programs being offered at no cost, we transcended both economic and geographic boundaries, with individuals in 65 countries across six continents viewing UMS programs. We also kept our entire staff fully employed, a commitment we made early on to take care of those who are so critical to the work that we do in the community. And we continued to support artists by investing in new work that will have a lasting impact. All of this was possible because of the steadfast support of the many donors who continued to support our work. For many of our staff, this past year was a time of learning and professional growth, both by developing new skill sets that can be applied immediately and by diving into visioning and planning exercises that will allow us to come back from the pandemic in an even stronger position. We also took the social issues that exploded in the public consciousness over the past 18 months as a call to action for our staff and spent a lot of time interrogating how we can become a more antiracist organization in all that we do. The lessons learned from this most unusual year will continue to guide us in the future. There is no “back to normal” for us at UMS, but a thoughtful and ongoing progression toward a new way of implementing our work.