Lullaby Project Evergreen

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The Lullaby Project pairs new and expecting parents and caregivers with professional artists to write and sing personal lullabies for their babies, supporting parental health, aiding childhood development, and strengthening the bond between parent and child.

Lullaby Project in Partnership with Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Education/Programs/Lullaby-Project is an evidence-informed, low cost, safe and scalable approach to supporting caregivers, infants, and early relational health. The Lullaby Project invites families to create, sing, and record their own personal lullabies. Since its inception in 2011, the Lullaby Project has helped to create approximately 4000 lullabies, in over 40 countries, and currently has 60+ Lullaby Partners across the world.

Through the Lullaby Project families are invited to create and sing personal lullabies for their babies with the help of professional musicians. Creating, singing, and sharing lullabies promotes overall family well-being by supporting caregiver/ maternal health, early child development, and parent-child bonding. 

Program Outcomes 

• Being Well: More parents experience a growing sense of their own agency, creativity, well being, self-confidence and capacity to be loving, sensitive and responsive care givers. 

• Strengthening Community: The writing and singing of lullabies strengthens relationships between parents, children and their community members. 

• Early Child Development: Lullaby lyrics, and the talking and singing that accompany them, can soothe a child and provide important opportunities for young children to hear new vocabulary, figurative language, elegant phrases, as well as exaggeration and jokes. 

• Cultural Expression and Sharing: Lullabies reflect the diverse linguistic and musical cultures that parents wish to share with their children. Songs have been written in over 40 different languages and in a diverse range of musical styles. These songs are shared with families and communities through a growing library of online recordings and live-streamed performances that extend the reach of participant stories, accomplishments, language and culture. 

Families Create New Lullabies 

Throughout the season, families will work with teaching artists to develop personal lullabies that reflect parent’s hopes and dreams for their children, in their language and musical style of choice. Carried out in a variety of project models, the program is adapted to best meet the needs of families and the community, including one on one sessions, group sessions, single sessions / multi-sessions, in person and/or online. Teaching artists will create demo recordings of each personal or group lullaby, which are shared with families and staff. Through workshops, recordings and concert experiences, parents come together to share, celebrate and sing their lullabies, encouraging parents to sing with their young children and to further support parent-child bonding.

Families Record, Perform & Share Lullabies 

Select lullabies are professionally recorded and shared publicly on the Lullaby Soundcloud page, which currently has a total of 103k streams in over 50 countries around the globe including Argentina, Mexico, Canada, UK, and France. In addition to recordings, select lullabies are performed live in concert as part of Carnegie Hall’s annual Lullaby Project Celebration Concert and live streamed via YouTube and social media channels. Carnegie Hall will continue to promote the Hopes and Dreams: The Lullaby Project album, featuring New York City lullabies recorded by major artists including Joyce DiDonato, Patti LuPone, Pretty Yende, Catherine Zeta Jones, Dianne Reeves, Rosanne Cash, Fiona Apple, Rhiannon Giddens, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Natalie Merchant, and Angelique Kidjo. Proceeds of the album benefit the original songwriters and support the Lullaby Project. 

Evaluation and Research 

Over the past decade, Carnegie Hall has worked with evaluators at WolfBrown to explore the impact that early music engagement and the Lullaby Project have on family well-being. Based on WolfBrown’s positive early findings, Dr. Catherine Monk, Associate Professor and Director for Research of the Women’s Program at Columbia University Medical Center, evaluated the effects of the Lullaby Project on familial relationships, language development, and maternal distress. In 2017, Virginia Commonwealth University and Jacobi Medical Center conducted a sample research study on lullabies and maternal well being, funded by the NEA. WolfBrown is currently evaluating the Philadelphia Lullaby Project as part of an NEA Research Lab, examining the role of music in parent-child mutuality. In partnership with Mount Sinai Health System’s Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine, Carnegie Hall is also currently part of the NEA AMEND Lab (Assessment of Music Experiences in Navigating Depression), to understand the impact of music experiences in addressing depression and social/emotional wellbeing. 

• WolfBrown’s report on music and early childhood, including the Lullaby Project: Why Music Making Matters: Singing, Playing, and Moving in the Early Years 

• WolfBrown’s research paper takes a closer look at how and why lullabies make a difference: Lullaby: Being Together, Being Well 

• Bernard VanLeer report on global music in early childhood, including the Lullaby Project: Making a Joyful Noise: The Potential Role of Music Making in the Well-Being of Young Families