Harvard Crooners: Building Intergenerational Relationships Through Participatory Music Making

The world is rapidly aging, and yet aging is fraught with many difficulties. In particular, the rights of older people to participate fully in cultural life are frequently not met. To help address this issue, we propose an innovative model for intergenerational, participatory music-making between younger people and older people. Specifically, instead of giving traditional, non-participatory performances for older people as is commonly done in nursing homes and other elderly institutions, we advocate for engaging seniors in collective music-making and singing. We believe this kind of collective music-making will better meet the rights of older adults to participate in cultural life and will lead to stronger intergenerational relationships.