Ahead of their rehearsal at a small theater in Yellow Springs, members of a community choir pulled out sheet music to the tune of a tinkering piano.
As their chatter turned to whispers, guest conductor David Brown launched the group into its first song: not Beethoven, but Beyonce.
“I want to leave my footprints on the sands of time, knowing there was something that I left behind,” a group of sopranos sang.
Their melody is soft, but on May 1, it’ll be many times louder. The Yellow Springs World House Choir will join groups from New Concord and Athens, from schools and prisons, from red districts and blue ones to form a chorus of a thousand voices.
They’ll rehearse all together just once, an hour and a half before the Schottenstein Center’s doors open in Columbus for the Concert for Humanity.
“It's a little terrifying, but without great risk, there's no great reward,” Brown said.
He’s the founder and creative director of the Harmony Project — a Columbus nonprofit dedicated to the arts and volunteer service.
The group is putting on its Concert for Humanity, in partnership with the Ohio Arts Council and the Ohio State University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
It’s one of just nine organizations from across the country selected to receive $150,000 as part of a pilot initiative focused on using the arts to strengthen the health and well-being of individuals and communities.
Creating harmony
Brown’s goal for the thousand member chorus isn’t for it to reach perfect pitch. It’s to create harmony in more than a musical sense.
“You can still be under a rock and know that we're divided. Like, you don’t have to come out from under the rock to know that,” he said. “There's such division that's based on your economic situation, your geographic location, then culture, race, gender.”
A song can’t magically bridge all those divides, Brown said, but music does hold power.
“What I do believe a song can do is heal division by fostering connection,” he said. “Then in that connection, we hope what will naturally come from it is: let's give each other a little more space and a little bit more grace and understand that we're all going through some of the same stuff. And if music can make us feel more joy, make us feel more connection, then what might be possible from that?”
Perhaps people will feel moved to work together to better their local community, Brown said. After all, you don’t have to agree on national immigration or education policy, to paint a mural downtown or clean up a playground for neighborhood kids.
“The whole goal is for the harmony to not end when the concert ends,” he said. “The concert is what starts it.”
Overcoming an epidemic of loneliness with the arts
After the surgeon general warned of an epidemic of loneliness and isolation in 2023, the National Endowment for the Arts launched its Arts, Health and Well-Being pilot initiative to support community building through art. The federal organization chose the Harmony project because of its promise to foster social connection and belonging.
Other organizations selected include an Indiana council that’s using the arts for substance use disorder prevention and recovery, and a center in Louisiana training local artists as community health workers.
But now in 2025, the climate around arts and humanities funding is different.
"Art is not what we get to once humanity is saved. Art is what saves humanity.”David Brown
Earlier this year, the National Endowment for the Arts eliminated a grant program that supported small organizations in underserved communities. Last week, the Trump Administration terminated millions of dollars in grant funds awarded to arts and culture organizations by the National Endowment for the Humanities. 80% of the staff at that federal organization have been placed on administrative leave.
Some worry similar actions could be coming to the National Endowment for the Arts.
Brown says the Harmony Project and efforts like it are worth funding.
“Art is an essential need,” he said. “Whether we really think of it that way or not is irrelevant because it just is. People don't realize that when they're down, they turn to music or when they need to be lifted up, they go see a play or a movie, they turn on their favorite television show.
“Art is what re-centers us to who we are and to this experience of being human. And so, what I'm fond of saying lately is that art is not what we get to once humanity is saved. Art is what saves humanity.”
Regardless of how the federal funding shakes out, he’s committed to hosting the Concert for Humanity this year.
And he’s hopeful more people will join in years to come, creating harmony that spans the state.
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