More than music: Stanford students and Canyon Oaks youth build connections through sound

At the final class meeting for MUSIC 110: Music in Psychic and Social Life, students and guests gather into a semicircle facing a big projector screen and speakers. The facilitator shares photos—groups of young people smiling and goofing around outdoors, a tight closeup of hands forming a heart shape. Then they play videos of songs that teams of Stanford students and teenagers have created together. The songs are touching, hopeful, funny.

In MUSIC 110, the classroom extends from Stanford to Canyon Oaks Youth Center (COYC), a residential mental health treatment facility for teens. Over ten weeks, Stanford students and COYC youth learn about rhythm, melody, and field sound recording together. They co-create songs and accompanying videos, writing lyrics and laying down tracks as collaborators. They form genuine partnerships where music becomes a tool for building trust and connection, giving Stanford students firsthand experience with community-engaged learning.

A partnership built on reciprocity

The partnership with COYC developed through instructor Erica Cao, a lecturer in Music in the School of Humanities and Sciences, who was a resident psychiatrist there before coming to Stanford. COYC staff have been important collaborators in the design of the course. This is the second consecutive year that MUSIC 110 has partnered with COYC, and a Winter 2027 class is already planned.

"The course uses music as a method for connection," said co-instructor Elizabeth Schumann, the Billie Bennett Achilles Director of Keyboard Programs and Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Music. "Shared creative work becomes a way to explore whether empathy can be practiced, whether social hierarchy can be broken down, and whether people with different backgrounds, identities, ages, and experiences can build meaningful relationships through making something together."

The class develops a musical adaptation of Photovoice, a participatory research method in which community members document and interpret their own experiences. Through sound, listening, recording, and songwriting, participants explore place, feeling, memory, and relationship while practicing shared authorship and being mindful of power dynamics. It enables researchers to capture meaningful information and data by providing a creative avenue for community members to express themselves. 

Theory meets practice

Music provides a shared practice through which participants can encounter experiences different from their own. As they collaborate, Stanford students and local youth build trust, form genuine connections, and learn from one another. For the youth, it’s a supportive space where they can express themselves and feel seen. For the Stanford students, it offers those same opportunities while also helping them learn how to engage with a community in a respectful and reciprocal way, putting community-engaged learning and research into practice and gathering qualitative insights to complement and enhance their classroom learning.

Students design the weekly sessions with guidance from the instructors and feedback from COYC staff. The youth also shape the sessions, suggesting activities such as a trip to Pulgas Ridge Nature Preserve to do field recording of nature sounds.

"A song can begin with a sound from a walk, a conversation, a fear, a favorite beat, a phrase, a spider scream, a dog, a rap reference, a melody, or a feeling," said Schumann. "The material gains meaning because participants choose it."

Learning that lasts

The decision to continue the partnership into a third year reflects the value that COYC staff and youth see in the program. COYC staff described the youth's excitement about the finished songs and observed that the project gave youth opportunities to practice social skills, cope with anxiety in new social situations, and surface difficult feelings that could then be processed with therapeutic support.

Stanford student reflections noted their learning about facilitation, power and positionality, and the complexities of community-engaged work. The experience also created a strong sense of community among the students themselves. "Students found community in the class—they even wanted to have a reunion," said Cao.

One Stanford student reflected: "Music and sound can be much more than artistic tools. They can create connection, build relationships, and help people develop a stronger sense of belonging."

"We've been doing this for two years now, and it just always amazes me," said Tiina Jensen, a staff member at COYC. "The first day, I was like, how is this even going to happen? And then always at the end, this is just amazing. It just wows me every time."

In addition to sharing their creations with classmates, instructors, friends, and family at the celebration, the songs are released as Spotify and YouTube playlists—a lasting reminder of what can happen when people come together to create something meaningful and find connection.