El Sistema music programmes have blossomed over the past decade, with the aim of fostering social development through intensive orchestral music instruction. Many scholars agree that creative music making can facilitate student agency development, increase a sense of belonging and promote creative expression by allowing students to bring their perspectives to the learning context. With these benefits apparent, it seems rational that El Sistema should incorporate creative music making into its curriculum. To build understanding of how creative music approaches function in some programmes, I used a multiple qualitative case study to examine eight teachers’ perspectives of creative music making within El Sistema and after-school music programmes in Canada and the United Kingdom. Findings revealed that teachers conceptualized creative music making as activities that develop agency through collaborative music creation, that have the benefit of creating a sense of belonging and that give students the opportunity to contribute to their community. Successful nurturing of creative music making seems to rely on connecting students to their wider community, which is achieved in part through incorporating students’ own musical tastes. Teachers’ experiences with creative music making in their own music education played a crucial role in preparing them to teach creative music.

Dominant discourses promote El Sistema and Sistema‐inspired music education programmes as positively transforming young lives through social inclusion and musical excellence. However, critics have raised concerns that the El Sistema model has little support from objective, evidence‐based research. To address this issue, the authors conducted a review of peer‐reviewed articles published in English between 2010 and 2020, in order to bring together descriptions and findings of research examining El Sistema and Sistema‐inspired programmes. Following a scoping review method, the authors identified 30 relevant articles for detailed review. The reported studies were identified to address programme impacts (including musical growth, academic achievement, cognitive development, and social‐emotional development) and programme design (e.g., pedagogical approaches, curricular focus, and programme challenges). Reported research methods included randomised control trials, longitudinal randomised studies, qualitative interview studies, a quasi‐experimental pre‐post design study, and ethnographic studies. Overall, the results of this scoping review strongly suggest that Sistema‐inspired music education programmes have great potential for positively impacting students, particularly in terms of musical and social‐emotional development, with less convincing but nevertheless reasonable evidence of increased academic achievement and cognitive development. The authors conclude that realising the potential of El Sistema and Sistema‐inspired programming requires context‐ and student‐specific teaching, curricula, and community support.

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