Kennedy Center Lays Off Seven Social Impact Staffers

The Center's social impact team, which was responsible for initiatives that reached out to underserved communities, has been effectively dismantled

The Kennedy Center has laid off seven staff members in its Social Impact team, retaining only those three staff members whose work does not have an equity focus, according to a report by NPR. The team was responsible for planning programming that brought more diverse communities to Kennedy Center events.

In a 2024 report, the Center described its social impact initiatives as being based around the idea that "the arts hold unique power in our society to build community, center joy, inspire action, and drive meaningful change." Its social impact programs aimed to use the arts to advance justice and equity.

Upcoming social impact initiatives included collaborations with Capital Pride Alliance on the LGBTQ+ festival World Pride 2025, as well as free Saturday dance classes run by the Hawaiian dance company Hālau Nohona Hawaiʻi and the KanKouran West African Dance Company. Free transport was often provided to the events.

A number of events and initiatives aimed at underserved communities have recently been cancelled at the Center, including a performance by the US Marine Band that was to feature top young students of color. Additionally, a concert by the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington was cancelled, and Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeffrey Seller opted to withdraw an upcoming production of their music Hamilton.

"How do you access the American promise if you don't have access to the impulse of creativity?" wrote Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the Center's Artistic Director of Social Impact, in a statement. "As the nation's cultural center, the Kennedy Center has an obligation to ask itself that question every day…to respond to the call of its namesake who imagined an America that was 'unafraid of grace and beauty'. "

"Our work in Social Impact was to widen our cultural radius and to imagine that inspiration itself was a constitutional right afforded to ALL of this nation's people."

" I realize I'm a very small cog in the larger machine, but it feels like yet another small slap in the face of democracy," said current Kennedy Center artist-in-residence Philippa Pham Hughes of the redundancies. " It's indicative of something much larger that's happening in our country."

"This decision was made after careful consideration and is based on the Kennedy Center's staffing needs," wrote LaTa'Sha Bowens, the Kennedy Center's Vice President of Human Resources.