The Global Leaders Institute offers diverse opportunities for Fellows to acquire real-life, hands-on experience, including working with a partner organization on a first-hand Case Study Assignment in the opening months of the MBA learning journey. This team-based challenge invites Fellows to explore the world of arts leaders making significant contributions worldwide. One of the initiatives Fellows work with yearly in this process is Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project, led by Sarah Johnson.
Since 2012, the Lullaby Project has paired new and expecting families with professional musicians to write and sing personal lullabies for their babies. This collaborative experience invites parents to write letters to their babies. At the same time, musicians help turn their words into music, exposing expecting parents to the process of artistic creation and celebrating their creativity along the way. Lullaby Project invites select parents yearly to perform and record their songs on a Carnegie Hall stage. What started as a New York City-based initiative in partnership with Jacobi Medical Center now includes 50 partner organizations worldwide. Today, the Lullaby Project enables partner organizations to support families across their communities in healthcare settings, schools, foster care, homeless shelters, correctional facilities, high schools, refugee camps, and other sites.
Shortly after Lullaby Project’s tenth anniversary, GLI met with Sarah Johnson, Chief Education Officer at Carnegie Hall and Director of the Hall’s Weill Music Institute, who attended Cases for Culture, a conference convened and organized by the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University and sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. This interview highlights themes of arts leadership, the instrumental uses of art for social impact, and how an organization of international prestige such as Carnegie Hall can uniquely contribute to New York City and the world.
What is the role of the work of art in the world?
When I think about art, I do not think much of the work of art but of the processes surrounding art (because of the nature of my work). Carnegie Hall works to bring artistic practice to the world in ways that music can do something productive for all. A legacy institution working for social change constitutes a unique perspective. To the surprise of many, Carnegie Hall has worked on various social issues and places for many years. To make the artistic practice most accessible, as Eric Booth says, I focus on the creative process, the “verbs of art” more than the “nouns of art.”
What do you think art can offer to Democracy?
I think that democracy requires the agency of its citizens; democracy requires us to respect each other.
When I think about the Lullaby Project, I think about the incredible collaboration between artists and families. People come in doubting their ability to write a song. Artists teach them a lot of things to make that happen. They teach people to play: there is playfulness and expertise around reflection, and that invites people to notice what they want to express and find the courage to express those wishes those dreams in their songs.
When I think of our work, we focus heavily on musical creativity and supporting musical creativity in all kinds of people. People often say, “That is an amazing project; you are giving people a voice,” but we are not giving people a voice; people have a voice already. We offer people the capacity to express their perspectives. Considering Carnegie Hall is renowned for its stage, the gesture of giving people the opportunity to express themselves on it is a democratic gesture. We offer the public the chance to hear voices and perspectives they would otherwise not hear. I think that is essential in a democracy. I think we need to develop more empathy for each other. It is difficult to do that if we repeatedly hear specific evaluations of particular communities.
Can art promote social change?
Absolutely. Art can promote social change in a lot of ways. When it comes to Lullaby Project, we often meet families who are experiencing challenges in their lives. While I cannot claim that the project transforms lives, I will say that we know from participants that the experience of creating lullabies and the use of the lullabies have built their sense of confidence in their capacity to parent and, by extension, in their ability to do other things in their lives. For example, we have met families that initiated the project in temporary housing who have found ways to get jobs, get secure housing, and get into a more stable situation. I would never claim causality, but song creation can contribute to well-being by giving families creative tools to withstand stress and hardship.
How does Carnegie Hall make a case for culture today?
Carnegie Hall is known as the Red and Gold Hall. It is known as this iconic stage, and one thing that is interesting about being a part of this institution now is that we do a broad range of activities. Those activities range from the expectable, like running national youth ensembles and things like that. But we also work in unexpected ways, such as with the justice system; we’ve been working for 13 years with Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Because of this deep and sustained work on social work organizations, we demonstrate that art can help address all kinds of global issues.
When people ask me in which ways art can transform lives, something everpresent in any arts organization’s mission statement, I think about our work at Sing Sing. I think about the men we’ve known there for 13 years that have come together to make music and support each other. I think about the 16 men that have been able to return home. I think about the system of mutual support that has provided people with a set of goals and aspirations that has given them community-building opportunities and something to feel proud about. I know that music has been transformative in their lives. The program helped many of them navigate the extraordinarily challenging time of reentering society and becoming returning citizens.
What does it take to be an arts leader today?
Leadership roles in cultural institutions are very challenging, like many leadership roles. I have been in this leadership role at the Weill Institute for 15 years, I partner with the Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall, and I still learn an enormous amount from him daily.
It takes humility. I have a lot of humility in this work. I have more humility now than I did when I started. We work with so many people within the hall, but we also partner with many people from different communities all over the city and even the world.
It takes constant learning and exploration. We are exploring together with our collaborators. There are some things I know and that we, as an institution, know that we bring to the people who work with us. But we learn as much, if not more, from the people participating in the programs and who ultimately contribute as much as we do.
These jobs are complex; they ask a lot of people. But these jobs are also an enormous privilege. They are about making small contributions to make the world a better place.
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Sarah Johnson is the Chief Education Officer at Carnegie Hall and Director of Weill Music Institute, Carnegie Hall’s education and community engagement enterprise. She develops and oversees all Carnegie Hall education and social impact programs. The Weill Music Institute annually serves over 500,000 children, students, teachers, parents, young music professionals, and adults in the New York City metropolitan area, across the United States, and around the world. During her time at Carnegie Hall, Ms. Johnson has led the Weill Music Institute in enormous programmatic growth and has launched numerous initiatives, including Musical Connections, serving people in healthcare settings and correctional facilities, including juvenile justice settings; the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, a summer training program for ages 16-19; NYO2, for ages 14-17; and most recently, NYO Jazz, for young jazz instrumentalists ages 16-19. She is the 2017 Americans for the Arts National Arts Education Leadership honoree and was the 2013 American Express NGen Leadership Award winner, an honor given each year to one accomplished leader under 40 who has demonstrated significant impact in addressing society’s critical needs.
About the Cases for Culture Conference
Organized by The Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University, the Cases for Culture Conference was held on Dec 2-3, 2022, presenting collaborations among distinguished artists, humanists, policymakers, and entrepreneurs who promote the social contributions of creativity. Brief narratives and the measured impact of creative interventions conveyed how and why participatory arts work to address transversal social concerns such as climate change, economic development, public health, education, violence prevention, and immigration, among others.
