Inclusion as a form of resistance: Emily List Fund supports a diverse arts world, one play, one song, one dance at a time

The Trump administration is trying to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from, well, everything. But those principles have been at the heart of the Emily List Fund since its founding in Emily’s memory 14 years ago.

After Emily lost her life at 26 to a rare form of cancer, her family established the fund to honor her belief that there should be no barriers to participation in theater, music and dance, that everyone should be able to participate in the performing arts no matter their income, physical ability or mental health.

So for the past 14 years, Emily’s Fund has awarded $100,000 in grants to performing artists trying to make the arts world more inclusive — one play, one song, one dance at a time.

One of this year’s grants will go to the Prindle School in Easthampton, Florence and Hadley, to fund scholarships for local children to participate in its week-long summer Rock Band program or in weekly private music lessons. Co-Founder Dan Prindle says the school is attempting to “close the equity gap” so there is “no barrier to entry for students at any income level.”

“Our Rock Bands are crafted to offer an ensemble performance opportunity to students with no previous musical experience,” he says. “In just one week, we allow students to explore rock instruments from guitar to keyboards to drums, choose an instrument that they love, form a band, and then learn two full rock songs in preparation for an end-of-the-week performance.”

In addition to their own efforts to include children from all income levels in their summer programs, Dan and his wife Michelle, the school’s co-founder, also advocate for robust funding of music in public schools because numerous studies have shown that students who take part in music education experience a myriad of benefits from improved test scores and better grades to fewer disciplinary issues and higher college acceptance rates.

Proof of that is the Sci-Tech Band, “the Pride of Springfield,” whose 500 members are three times more likely to stay in school than non-band students. That’s because they’ve learned skills under conductor Gary Bernice and his colleagues not only in music, but also in leadership and community.

Sci-Tech will use this year’s grant from Emily’s Fund to purchase instruments so that any student who wants to play can be in the band, blast out the “Sci-Tech Cheer,” and continue to make the band a special point of pride for its school.

For these students, being part of the band makes all the difference: last year one of them said before a performance, “At home we have our family. At school, we have band.”

Similarly, the Autism Drama Summer Camp at Theatre Horizon, where Amherst native Nell Bang-Jensen is artistic director, helps build “Creativity and Confidence (understanding myself), Communication and Collaboration (understanding others) and Community and Care (understanding the collective).”

Emily’s Fund helped the Norristown, Pennsylvania, theater start its first-ever summer experience for individuals on the autism spectrum in 2024, and the camp was so successful that it will be offered again this year. Young actors will spend a week using theater games, improv activities and acting exercises to create an original immersive theatrical experience. This year’s theme is “Out of This World,” and students will create a final performance on the last day centered on a trip through space.

Emily’s grant will help the theater pay teaching artists and provide scholarships for students who are not able to pay the full tuition.

Finally, Emily and Melissa van Wijk are kindred spirits who believe that everyone is “born dancing” and that they should have the opportunity to keep dancing. “Disability belongs in dance,” Melissa says, and her New York City company includes dancers in wheelchairs and those with other physical disabilities.

Melissa will use her grant to help these dancers work on choreography for a new performance, and she’ll do a second work-based learning program in which students — disabled and not — will learn to produce their own live dance performance including costume design and construction, lighting design and stage management.

While earning her doctorate in dance education, she’s also working with Lighthouse Guild (serving minors who are blind or have low vision) to create a costume design internship program.

Melissa is trying “to expand the discussion not just from how we best teach students with disabilities, but what and how we teach all students — especially those who do not have a disability — about how disability belongs in dance.”

If Emily were here, she’d see her fund as a form of resistance in these times. And she’d be proud to be an inspiration to these performing artists in their efforts to include, well, everyone.

Karen List is Emily’s mom and a professor emeritus in Journalism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.