Quick Facts
- Settlement is the largest and one of the oldest community schools of the arts in the United States having served more than 300,000 students since its founding in 1908. With upwards of 300 degreed faculty and staff, Settlement is one of the largest employers of musicians in the tri-state area.
- Settlement provides 10,000 weekly services of individual lessons, classes and activities in music, dance and visual arts to children and adults from every zip code in the eight-county Philadelphia region. Settlement’s six branches can be found in South, West and Northeast Philadelphia, Germantown, Willow Grove, PA and Camden, NJ.
- Settlement provides a five-day-a-week nationally recognized, arts-centered preschool to inner-city children whose test scores for school readiness are three times greater than peers in a non-arts based program. *
- Settlement’s Teacher Training Institute of the Arts (TTIA) offers programs to help other pre-school and elementary school teachers incorporate same tested arts strategies into regular classrooms.
- Settlement’s Advanced Study Program for pre-professional teens, Adult Chamber Players, Daytime Seniors Program and Therapeutic Arts Program for children and adults with disabilities have served as models for like-minded efforts in other major cities.
- Settlement’s generous financial and scholarship assistance of more than $2 million each year is among the highest of community schools across the country.
- Among its notable alumni are a Nobel Laureate, MacArthur Fellows, Pulitzer Prize winners, a Fulbright scholar, Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Award winners, published authors, elected officials and many distinguished performers in all genres of music. Many of these alumni are part of the Settlement 100 – a group of 100 interesting, diverse and unexpected individuals whose Settlement experience helped shape their lives.
* Brown, E., Benedett, B, & Armistead, M. (2010). Arts enrichment and school readiness for children at risk. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 25, 112-124