YMF provides year-round tuition-free music, media arts, creative career pathway classes and workforce development training to the communities of South Central Los Angeles through our newly completed, state-of-the-art facility in Historic South Central Los Angeles. In-school programs are delivered weekly to over 6,000 students at 26 partner schools in under-served, high-need communities across Los Angeles.

Community programs originate from the YMF Center for Music and Creative Technologies (CMCT). Classes are free of charge and open to the the communities of South Central Los Angeles and beyond. Offerings include classes keyboard, guitar, violin, trumpet, flute clarinet, drums, and percussion, composition/songwriting, music technology/production, songwriting, and filmmaking.

The CMCT features a multimedia lab/classroom, audio/visual control room, and a production studio/sound stage that comprise the heart of our Creative Career Pathways and Workforce Development Programs. Creative Career Pathway programs were created to serve at-risk and system impacted youth ages 16 to 25 by developing creative self-expression through lyric writing, storytelling and digital music and video creation while also providing the foundational skills needed for participation in the creative economy.

In-school programs bring tuition-free, weekly, music instruction directly to over 5,200 students at 24 partner schools in South LA, Eastside LA, and Downtown LA. Programs run throughout the academic year and over the summer. Many of these programs are dual-language. In-school programs are guided by benchmark Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) Standards. YMF’s proprietary curricular planning tools integrate the domains of Social/Emotional Learning (SEL) with musical skill development. Specialized classes include Music Fundamentals for pre-k through 4-th Grade, and Music Technology and Production, Songwriting, Strings, (including guitar and ukulele), Brass, Woodwinds, and Percussion for grades 4 – 12.