Collaboration examines impact of music on early childhood

In Spring 2020, an ambitious partnership brought together the College of Music’s Entrepreneurship Center for Music, CU Boulder’s Renée Crown Wellness Institute, Boulder Community Health, Children's Hospital of Colorado and Carnegie Hall.

The Lullaby Project paired new parents with student composers to create a personal lullaby for their baby. When the pandemic put in-person meetings between patients and composers on hold, organizers saw an opportunity to make the project even larger. Via Zoom, undergraduate and graduate students worked with more than 30 families from across the country to brainstorm ideas for the lullabies and record the original works at a distance.

Researchers will now measure the effects of the interactions on parental loneliness, sense of belonging, depression, anxiety and self-reported parent-child connection.