The Ravinia Festival is proud to call the city of Highland Park home. Located 20 miles north of Chicago, with a population of about 30,000, it’s a vibrant community with a bustling downtown and the charming Ravinia Business District, adjacent to the festival.
Since 1904, the Ravinia Festival has drawn hundreds of thousands of people to the city each year to share in the joy of entertainment and live music. It’s a mission shared by many organizations in the community, from The Art Center Highland Park and the Bitter Jester Foundation to the Highland Park Players and beyond.
Ravinia Festival actively gives back to the community:
Each year, the festival offers free and discounted tickets to locals for select performances and partners with local organizations. Since 2025, the festival has partnered with the Ravinia District Farmers Market to offer its farm-to-table shopping experience on the festival grounds, set to a live music soundtrack. Ravinia Festival also partners with the Highland Park Senior Center to offer free and discounted tickets to residents
In partnership with North Shore School District 112 and Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play music education programs, the festival presents workshops and performances to elementary and middle school students in the neighborhood to raise awareness of varied music styles, and provides hundreds of classical concert passes to students and families of Highland Park and Highwood schools.
Beyond Highland Park, Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play Opportunity Lawn Pass Program works with 200 social service agencies and every public library in Chicago and its north and south suburbs to provide more than 10,000 Ravinia tickets to people otherwise unable to attend concerts.
Ravinia Festival gives the Highland Park Community Foundation, which in turn supports local non-profits, a percentage of its annual gross ticket revenue, totaling more than $14 million since 2019.
The festival is one of the city’s biggest employers; in 2025 alone, it provided 537 summer jobs. For concert operations, the festival works with Highland Park to hire bus drivers, and employs local police officers and nurses for on-site safety.
An active member of the Highland Park Chamber of Commerce and the Ravinia Neighbors Association, the festival offers local businesses special opportunities for increased visibility.
Ravinia Festival helps the city of Highland Park with various utility needs, including winter snow storage, the installation of a tornado siren on the property, and antennas for water-meter reading. Additionally, a large cistern installed underneath the South Parking Lot collects rainwater via permeable bricks, helping to alleviate stress on the city’s storm sewers and control flooding in the area surrounding the park. To ease congestion of local telecom equipment, Ravinia installed a Distributed Antenna System to improve cellular reception around the park.
Read more about the Ravinia Festival’s work in the 2025 Annual Impact Report.
