A Columbus nonprofit that spent six days this summer teaching young people to build instruments, compose music and write computer code has won one of the city’s top arts honors. A Tribe for Jazz received the Greater Columbus Arts Council’s 2026 Columbus Makes Art Excellence Award for Jazz Lab Summer Columbus, a free program that welcomed 979 young people ages 5 to 17, according to the organization’s announcement. The award, in the category for organizations with annual budgets below $1 million, carries a $10,000 prize.
The council’s award recognizes outstanding achievement in innovation, risk and artistic excellence in a performance, exhibition, program or project. A Tribe for Jazz was honored at the Creative Columbus Celebration on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at Columbus College of Art & Design’s Canzani Center, an evening that also featured live music, dance performances and refreshments, the announcement said.
Jazz Lab Summer Columbus ran June 16-18 and June 23-25 at the Fort Hayes Construction Arts Building, where participants rotated through 10 immersive, hands-on labs. In sessions with names like JazzFab Lab, Virtual Reality Music Making and Remix the Code, students built instruments from everyday materials, composed music in virtual reality and learned Python and JavaScript from music producers using a program called EarSketch.
The idea, the organization says, was to let young people explore the connections between the arts and science, technology, engineering and math by actually doing the work. Working alongside artists, producers, engineers, designers, educators and cultural practitioners, participants experimented, made creative choices and solved problems together rather than sitting through lectures.
"Jazz Lab starts with a simple invitation: try it," Stephanie Matthews, executive director of A Tribe for Jazz, said in the organization’s announcement. "Build an instrument. Make music. Write code. We want young people to discover what interests them by getting their hands into the work. This award recognizes what’s possible when 21 partners come together to make that opportunity available," she said in the announcement.
Those 21 partners spanned Columbus classrooms, stages and neighborhoods. The program received funding from the City of Columbus and AEP Ohio, and its educational partners included COSI, Ohio State Engineering, Makerspace Central and The Singing Buckeyes. Youth partners that brought young people to the labs included the YMCA, YWCA, Boys & Girls Club, ETSS, Eckerd Connects and the Rickenbacker Woods Foundation, according to the announcement.
A Tribe for Jazz is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to preserve the legacy and advance the future of jazz through visual storytelling, live performances, education and community engagement. For Columbus families, Jazz Lab’s appeal was simple: a free, hands-on summer program where a child could pick up an instrument one hour and a coding skill the next — and an award that suggests the city’s arts community noticed.