New Orleans: Music, Culture & Social Change
New Orleans | 6–8 Day Featured Program
Experience New Orleans Through Its Music, History & Communities
Explore a city where music, culture, history, and social change are deeply connected.
Students experience New Orleans beyond the French Quarter, learning from musicians, artists, educators, and community leaders while exploring how African American and Creole traditions, the history of slavery, music, and the impact of Hurricane Katrina continue to shape life today.
Through live music, workshops, community engagement, and meaningful conversations, students discover how culture can preserve history, strengthen communities, and inspire change.
What Students Explore
MUSIC & CULTURAL EXPRESSION | Experience jazz, brass bands, second line traditions, and live performance while exploring music as identity, storytelling, and expression.
HISTORY & SOCIAL CHANGE | Examine the legacies of slavery and inequality and how communities have responded through creativity, activism, and resilience.
RACE, CULTURE & IDENTITY | Explore the African American, Creole, and multicultural traditions that have shaped New Orleans.
COMMUNITY & SERVICE | Work alongside a local organization on a hands-on project while learning about the people strengthening New Orleans today.
RESILIENCE & PLACE | Explore Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath while considering how environment, policy, culture, and community shape how a city responds and rebuilds.
6-8 Day Itinerary
A Program, Built to Be Customized
This itinerary uses music, history, and community as interconnected ways of understanding New Orleans.
Your school can customize the program length, activities, academic themes, and community engagement around your students and learning goals.
Activities listed below are examples and subject to availability and confirmation.
Day 1 | Welcome to New Orleans: First Sounds of the City
Arrive in New Orleans and get oriented to a city unlike anywhere else in the United States.
Gather for a traditional Creole welcome dinner before exploring Frenchmen Street, where students get their first introduction to the city’s vibrant live music and performing arts culture.
Sample Experiences:
French Quarter • Creole cuisine • Frenchmen Street • Live music • Welcome dinner
Day 2 | The Stories Beneath the city: slavery, history & memory
Travel outside the city to Whitney Plantation to explore the history of slavery in Louisiana through the experiences and stories of enslaved people.
Return to New Orleans for a guided exploration of the French Quarter, connecting the city’s architecture and public spaces to the complex histories and cultures that shaped them.
Sample Experiences:
Whitney Plantation • History of slavery • French Quarter • Architecture • Guided historical exploration
Day 3 | Music, Culture & Identity: Finding New Orleans’ Rhythm
Experience New Orleans music from the inside during an interactive workshop with local musicians, exploring second line traditions, rhythm, improvisation, and the relationship between music and community.
Continue through the city’s Creole history and Mardi Gras traditions, examining how music, celebration, race, and identity have shaped New Orleans culture.
Sample Experiences:
Second line music workshop • Local musicians • Mardi Gras traditions • Le Musée de F.P.C. • Creole culture
Day 4 | Community, Resistence & Service: New Orleans After Katrina
Explore the impact of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, considering how the disaster affected neighborhoods differently and what recovery has meant for communities across New Orleans.
Then move from learning to participation. Meet a local community organization and take part in a hands-on project connected to community resilience, food access, environmental restoration, neighborhood improvement, or another locally identified priority.
Close with a facilitated reflection connecting service, leadership, resilience, and the responsibility of visitors to engage thoughtfully with the communities they enter.
Sample Experiences:
Hurricane Katrina & Beyond • Community leader conversation • Hands-on service project • Neighborhood exploration • Leadership reflection
Day 5 | Jazz & the Power of Music: From Cultural Tradition to Social Change
Meet with a local music or youth arts organization to learn how New Orleans’ musical traditions are preserved and passed on to the next generation.
Visit the New Orleans Jazz Museum before gathering for a farewell dinner and experiencing live jazz at Preservation Hall, bringing the program full circle through the music that has carried New Orleans stories around the world.
Sample Experiences:
Roots of Music or similar organization • New Orleans Jazz Museum • Local musicians • Farewell dinner • Preservation Hall
Day 6 | Taking New Orleans Home: Reflection & Departure
Gather for a final reflection on the people, music, histories, and communities students encountered throughout the program.
Consider how culture can preserve memory, create belonging, respond to injustice, and help communities imagine a different future before beginning the journey home.
Sample Experiences:
Student reflection • Closing conversation • Airport transfer • Departure
Make this program your own
Start Here. Then Shape Around Your Course.
This itinerary is a starting point. Customize the program length, academic themes, performances, workshops, community partners, service experiences, and neighborhoods to align with your course, group size, dates, and budget.
Music & Performing Arts
Jazz • Brass bands • Second line • Live performance • Music workshops
History & Social Change
Slavery • Civil rights • Hurricane Katrina • Race • Social justice
Culture & Identity
Creole culture • Mardi Gras • Food • Neighborhoods • Cultural traditions
Community & Leadership
Local organizations • Community leaders • Service learning • Resilience • Reflection
Environment & Place
Hurricane Katrina • Coastal Louisiana • Environmental justice • Community resilience
Could this work for your students?
Experience New Orleans through the people, music, and communities that make the city extraordinary. Use this program as your starting point or tell us what you'd change. We'll work with you to align the itinerary with your students, course objectives, preferred dates, group size, and budget.
Have a different academic focus in mind?