Creative Collaboration

The first chapter of a Lullaby Project song is usually written in a room where strangers have just met. Professional composers sit beside a mother who has never written music before. A child wanders around the room, curious but unsure. Participants may speak through an interpreter. Others may communicate more through gestures than words. At first, there are introductions, hesitant smiles, and long pauses. There is no score, no lyrics, no expectation of what the music should become. 

Sistema Europe reports that their Erasmus+ KA153 project “Music and Social Action in Europe: Practices in Exchange” has officially been approved.

For nine years, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, Greece—in partnership with El Sistema Greece and New York’s Carnegie Hall—has presented works from The Lullaby Project, in which people with diverse experiences work with composers and songwriters to transform personal stories about relationships with children into original musical works.

Sistema Toronto’s students engaged in a term-long composition project with award-winning composer Aaron Manswell and the Nathaniel Dett Chorale (NDC).

Each summer for the past 18 years, Music Connects has brought 60 young people from divided and marginalized communities across the Western Balkans together in Skopje.

Applications are open through February 28 for the Kuonyesha Art Fund, which welcomes proposals from artists and groups in Africa for creative projects that promote community collaboration and address social issues.