Our Approach

In both Israel and the United States, there are few places where young people can come together across difference.
In Israel, most Arabs and Jews live in separate neighborhoods and attend separate schools. There are practically no equalizing spaces for Israeli and Palestinian youth. In the United States, urban and rural young people attend different schools and school zoning often runs along race and class-based lines. These climates of division create hate, mistrust, and fear. As an alternative to the status quo, Heartbeat breaks through these entrenched physical and psychological barriers by providing safe, engaging spaces for youth to:

• learn to build critical awareness of their reality
• come to trust and respect each other as equals
• imagine and proactively co-create locations of possibility

Music sustains and enables this entire process, as the compelling challenges of composing, rehearsing, recording and performing offer a constructive outlet to express and explore participants’ understanding of reality. This unites participants within a shared purpose.

Young musicians gain skills in improvisation, critical thinking, performance technique, music theory, communication, empathy, leadership, and musical co-creation while engaging in dialogue about their daily lives and the conflict that surrounds them. Through this process, participants raise their critical consciousness, and harness their agency as grassroots cultural and community leaders to challenge the status quo in and between their communities.

Furthermore, Heartbeat’s youth musicians exercise their agency to impact their communities by modeling positive intergroup relationships to their communities. Through live performances and multimedia productions, these young agents of change help build critical awareness and challenge the societal structures of division and conflict.

For more insight into what Heartbeat does, listen to what some of Heartbeat’s youth musicians have to say.

Heartbeat’s Educational Philosophy

Heartbeat staff members are trained musicians and dialogue facilitators. They are entrusted to create a space for participants to build critical consciousness of their complicated world and to support them in developing skills in critical thinking, communication, leadership, and nonviolent civic engagement.

We use a method called “horizontal learning” in which youth participants share and build understanding of the world from one another using dialogue, developing agency to navigate their futures. Heartbeat staff members assist in the process of participant-centered learning by facilitating activities which open participants to each other, sensitively challenging participants to ask deeper questions, and supporting each member in being fully heard.

Heartbeat uses music to connect to a sustained process of conscientização (consciousness raising), and enables participants to form and express their own opinions so they learn to name their surroundings. As an institution dedicated to horizontal learning, Heartbeat staff members do not and morally cannot impose their political beliefs and understanding upon their youth participants. Instead, in creating safe spaces for youth to communicate and witness reality, Heartbeat facilitators support and trust participants to deepen their understanding of reality and amplify their voices to impact their communities

Heartbeat’s Theory of Change