Música y salud mental

When Lotus Centre for Special Music Education opened its doors in Ottawa, Canada in 2012, we thought our mission was clear: provide access to high-quality music instruction for students with exceptionalities and disabilities who were being left out of traditional lessons. What we didn’t yet realize was that our students were about to become our greatest teachers, shifting our organization from a provider of services to a learning community shaped directly by their needs and strengths.

Singing (really, any artistic act) is an act of vulnerability. Your voice is you—your breath, your body, your emotions, your story. When you sing, you offer all of that up; even after a lifetime of performing, I still feel that fear when I step on stage.

If performing can be scary for us educators, how much scarier must it be for teen students still discovering their identity—for whom “fitting in” can feel like the most important thing?

At events like these, it’s easy to think about the word “community” as the people in the room. But ESUSA’s nifty trick was to take us outside. Rather than celebrate our professional community—the connections we form with colleagues—the ESUSA leadership team explored the ties that bind us to larger, more diverse communities—of families, of activists, of scientists, of lawmakers, and of the folks that lawmakers tend to ignore.

La música tiene el poder de transformar vidas, fortalecer comunidades y cuestionar los sistemas que las conforman, pero ¿cómo es en realidad ese proceso transformador? Desde hace cinco años, el Premio Lewis de Música (TLPM) ha abordado esta cuestión apoyando a organizaciones que aprovechan el poder de la música para elevar y empoderar a los jóvenes.