Madison Scouts’ series of educational camps — held in conjunction with the 2025 DCI Summer Tour — provided Wisconsin high school band students and directors the opportunity to learn from the World Class corps.
“It’s a big part of Forward Performing Arts and Madison Scouts’ mission and our vision to make sure that we’re reaching out to Wisconsin bands and doing what we can to support the health of marching bands in the state,” said David Lofy who serves as director of programs for Forward Performing Arts and as director of the Madison Scouts.
The series consisted of three, one-day educational clinics designed to support the marching band community in Wisconsin. The clinics spanned across the Badger State, held this summer in the cities of Hammond, Fond du Lac, and Whitewater.
According to Lofy, the series brought in hundreds of students who had the opportunity to learn from Madison Scouts educational staff and work toward a special performance alongside the corps.
“You see the students really light up when they get the chance to play the first note or do the first bit of choreography with the members, so you can tell it’s really exciting,” Lofy said. “It fills them with a lot of joy and fun.”
Headquartered in Madison, a key focus in recent years for Forward Performing Arts, the parent organization of the Madison Scouts, has been on creating more opportunities for marching bands within the state of Wisconsin.
“For us, it has been thinking thoughtfully about, ‘How can we have a greater impact within our state?’” Lofy said.
Overall, the summer camp series is one of many initiatives that the Scouts take in order to increase marching band participation across Wisconsin. Regardless of whether students march with the corps or with their high school bands, the organization is looking to keep the marching arts thriving by getting more students involved.
“We want them to do more marching band, whatever that looks like,” Lofy said. “If there are ways that we can give tools to help the bands be stronger, or to just do marching band in general, we want to be able to do that.”
In addition to the summer camp series, Forward Performing Arts does annual outreach to Wisconsin high school band students by providing complimentary tickets to attend the Scouts-sponsored DCI Whitewater Classic. In 2025, more than 1,300 students, directors and chaperones were welcomed to the July 5 event at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater.
“The vision for this program was, ‘Let’s support marching band in whatever ways we can,’” Lofy said. “For us, a big part of that is inspiring the next generation, whether they do drum corps or not, to just love band.”
As the Madison Scouts continue working toward the DCI World Championships in Indianapolis in August, Lofy said the corps measures its impact not just by what it does in Lucas Oil Stadium, but by what it does for the marching music community as a whole.
“When these students walk back into their band programs at home, hopefully they not only have new tools to be better performers, but they love doing band a little more,” Lofy said. “That’s what we love seeing the most; they’re walking away inspired and feeling filled up by the experience.”
