Perspectivas y Acción Colectiva

I have traveled and taught in nearly 45 countries: at an orphanage in Greenland, in refugee camps, and alongside migrants and refugees who escaped war. I learned to teach when words were not enough, and to build community through music. Somewhere along the way, I forgot something essential: to support others, we also need support.

In Nancy Fraser’s framework, social justice requires both redistribution (economic resources) and recognition (cultural and symbolic status). Symbolic recognition is the validation of one’s identity, dignity, and self-worth within a broader socio-cultural context. And in 1990s Medellín—our time—young people faced material deprivation and severe symbolic misrecognition, viewed solely through the lens of urban violence, stigma, and invisibility. 

One of our longest-standing members asked a question at a meeting this year that I still cannot answer well. He had rehearsed four or five pieces for our concert last December. On the afternoon itself, he participated in playing only one of them. He wanted to know how that had come about. He put his question to everyone in the room.

Last month, my daughter’s choir director needed parents to take tickets to the year-end concert. I had been a choir singer and director myself, so I know the invisible work it takes to put students on a stage. When the request came, I wanted to be the kind of parent who showed up.

Then, my week got overwhelming. By the time the concert arrived, I was no longer deciding between helping and not helping. I was deciding which responsibility would boil over first if I took my attention off it.

Every other week this season, I wrote updates to my Los Angeles Philharmonic colleagues—a small, internal note meant to keep our broader institution abreast of what the Learning Department was up to. On the surface, it could be viewed as mundane: a calendar snapshot, a few highlights, the ever-important statistics everyone needs. But as I scrolled back through nine months of messages, I realized the depth they carry. These were not only stories about music lessons, concerts, and special events. They were testaments to the impact of connection built across programs, networks, and industries.

What does visual art have to do with listening?

It’s an unusual question—but one that’s well worth exploring, as I discovered recently when I attended Sguardi Paralleli (Parallel Glances) – Art Therapy and Autism: Art as Language, an exhibition held in Alassio, Italy and curated by art therapist Carla Paura.

When we first designed the Dream Orchestra in 2010, we saw “isolation” as one of the most urgent conditions in children’s lives. At the time, the intensity of college entrance competition had already reached elementary school, and many children were being pushed into highly competitive, lonely environments.

Fifteen years later, children’s lives have not become easier. They remain caught in the competitive trap of the education system while social and economic inequality continues to deepen their vulnerability. Declining physical and mental wellbeing, weakened community ties, and the replacement of direct relationships with media-based activities have also left them increasingly disconnected.

“Spotlight attention vs. lantern attention.” I first encountered this distinction in the work of the U.S. psychologist Allison Gopnick.

Spotlight attention means bringing full focus to a specific task. We develop this capacity over time, and we must!—it’s hard to succeed in life without the ability to focus well. Schooling is dedicated to developing this capacity: all those hours sitting at a desk and “paying attention” to information that rarely feels relevant; all those tests to measure spotlight skills.

In arts education programs, we tend to work with our heads down. Doing our work every day is enough: it takes more time than we have to create our lesson plans, to build healthy organizational infrastructure that is adaptive and responsive, or even to collaborate with the colleagues within our own organizations. As artists and arts leaders, we forget to look up and out. But as various crises combine forces to pull us away from each other, our need for collective work is not something we can afford to have on a backburner. It needs to be a central focus. We need to build strong local networks and to diversify our collaborators. 

We need to connect—with fellow arts organizations, and with organizations we might never consider in our daily work.

Across the field of music for social impact, a lot of energy goes toward communication: Tell your story. Build your evidence base. Find the right combination of data and narrative, and you’ll finally get the support or decisions you’re seeking.

I work across sectors on exactly these goals: helping organizations design research studies that reflect their unique approaches and articulate their impact in ways that actually land. So I get it: refining communication is valuable work.

But it’s not the full picture. And our failure to see that full picture keeps us from igniting the changes we value.