The Lullaby Project
The Lullaby Project uses music to strengthen the bond between parents and children, give voice to the hopes and dreams they have for their children, and imagine future possibilities.
Each year the Lullaby Project brings musician mentors together with incarcerated parents to create a lullaby for children who cannot be with their parents. The process culminates with a personalized CD for each child with their parent’s song, a compilation CD with all the songs, and a public concert performed at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center. The Hiland Mountain Lullaby Project is one of 33 projects sponsored by Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute, and is the only lullaby program in the country that features a public concert set within a correctional center.
Read a summary here of each year of the Hiland Mountain Lullaby Project. Click on “Learn More” for photos and videos from each year, as well as clips from each lullaby.
Lullabies, year after year
Lullaby Project 2016
The Lullaby Project offered Hiland’s incarcerated mothers an opportunity to create and share a personal lullaby with help from 16 musicians of diverse cultures in Anchorage that reflect the diverse inmate populations. The mothers included three Alaska Natives with children who live in the villages, without the opportunity to come into Anchorage to visit their mothers.
Lullaby Project 2017
The second year of the Lullaby Project broadened its scope by including two released inmates who became part of the cadre of 14 teaching artists. The teams again collaborated with Hiland mothers to write a lullaby for their children. In a poignant addition, two children of inmates wrote a reciprocal lullaby to their incarcerated mothers. A Fine Arts Music Journal was produced with the lullaby songs, and these music journals were given to elementary music teachers through school partnerships. Finally, a children’s lullaby music workbook was developed, a compilation CD was produced and each child of an inmate received a personalized CD with his/her mother’s song. A public concert had an audience of over 200 in attendance.
Lullaby project 2018
For the first time, fathers were included in the Lullaby Project. This year’s project included eight mothers and eight fathers who wrote and recorded lullabies for their children. As a prerequisite, none of the men have been charged with sexual misconduct or physical abuse of women. Each phase of the project was repeated twice because the men and women are involved separately. Male inmates worked with male teaching artists.
Lullaby project 2019
The 2019 Lullaby involved eleven mothers and Anchorage-based teaching musicians. The mothers were comprised of eight women of color who are serving life sentences and four mothers who will leave the center within the next two years. The project chose life sentencing mothers because their voices are often unheard. The allowed these women to find a voice in the sea of justice and injustice that is their world, to help those young mothers coming into the system through the power of their words and music. As in previous years, incarcerated mothers from Hiland found hope and possibility in the process of sharing their stories. Lifer Annie stated “I feel renewable and I have accomplished something in my life. Lullaby brings women together in this institution, lullaby inspires.”
These lullabies are more than song; they are threads that reconnect and warmth that heals.
