Cheerful voices singing along to a harp rendition of “Jingle Bells” are expected to fill Weathervane Playhouse on Dec 16, when harpist Olivia Claggett will be performing alongside her sister Sophia Claggett.
After an interactive Christmas concert, there will be a live auction featuring Licking County experiences, including a wedding package.
The funds from the auction will be used for the Licking County Harp Project, a creative project created by Claggett aimed to connect Licking County through music.
“The Licking County Harp Project came from a desire that I have to bring people back together,” Claggett said. “I feel like a lot of the rhetoric that we’re fed today, whether it’s from social media where people are trying to outdo each other all the time or it’s on television or radio or whatever the case might be, instead of using those outlets as a way to bring people together, I think they’re divisive and I don’t think it has to be like that,” Claggett said.
The idea came to her in the spring of 2024. She wanted to embark on a project to use music and storytelling as a way to bring people together.
Read more: Harpist Olivia Claggett uses her music to inspire growth
“Our mission is simple,” she reads from the Licking County Harp Project mission statement. “We want to embrace the natural beauty of the people in places of Licking County in both documented words and film work in order to shine light into the world through music and storytelling. That sums it all up. We want people to come together.”
A specific harp is being built for this project. Next spring, Claggett will travel to Texas to bring the bright pink, personality-filled Licking County harp home. Ben Dunham, the artist and creator of the harp, has made two out of four of Claggett’s personal harps. A goal of the project is to bring attention to local businesses, so Dunham will add logos and names of businesses and individuals that helped out with the project.
“Nobody else is going to have a harp like this,” Claggett said.
Then, Claggett and the Licking County harp will visit Licking County’s “gems.” She wants to take the harp to parks, the Midland Theatre, the Longaberger basket building and an array of local businesses.
“I get to pull in all of these local businesses and people who are kind of the movers and shakers around here and we get to highlight them,” Claggett said.
Part of the Licking County Harp Project includes a podcast and a documentary featuring the harp and centering local businesses, while using music and storytelling as a means of connection.
“I want to start it with the business owners themselves. I want to find out their stories. Every small business owner has a story of what sparked them,” Claggett said. “Then I want to dig deeper and I want to get to people at the heart level,”
She’s interested in what brought people to where they are in their life and how music can be used to heal parts of oneself, maybe that one didn’t even know was broken. She wants to ask people how music can inspire them. The goal is to make people feel comfortable sharing their dream or their goal.
Hey Babes, the bakery and coffee shop that Claggett had all her meetings at is involved in the auction.
“Once the harp is finished, we’re going to come in and do a whole film shoot and then also do a podcast interview with the girls and talk about — what was your spark that made this happen? So then we get to shout them out. We’re going to do that to as many local Licking County businesses as possible,” Claggett said.
Kristi White, owner of R&M Bakery alongside Sam White, was excited to support Claggett in both the auction and the Licking County Harp Project.
“We like to support local musicians and different things in our community. We were on board with donating what we could to help with her auction,” Kristi White said. “I think it’s a great idea. I think what she is doing is phenomenal. It’s a great way to get the message out.
Kristi White looks forward to Claggett’s work with the Licking County Harp Project. She mentioned that her small business, located in the heart of downtown Newark, would love to be a part of the project.
“I would love, once she gets the harp, for her to be able to come and play in our lobby for our customers,” Kristi White said. “We support her and look forward to her project being a success in the community and her being able to fulfill what she wants it to be.”
Claggett was surprised by the community response she has gotten to the project.
“I explained my vision to them. I gave them my heart. They jumped on board so fast, it almost scared me. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m in charge of this. Am I doing this right?’ Because when you forge a pathway, you never know if you’re doing it right necessarily, but there really is no right or wrong way to do it. It’s filled with passion and heart,” Claggett said.
For the Jingle Bell Harp concert on Dec. 16, Claggett shared that around 20 donated packages will be auctioned off. According to Claggett, these auction items will be more than a simple basket of soap. They are full Licking County experiences. One of the auction items includes a full-service wedding, all staffed by local vendors and connections Claggett has made over the years.
As Claggett described, the event will serve as a way to get people going about the Licking County Harp Project.
“With this auction that we’re doing, it’s another way to get even more people to know about it in a cool way. Because this whole thing is based around Licking County and our roots here and the people and relationships here. That means that this auction means even more, because everything we’re auctioning off is a Licking County experience,” Claggett said.
She shared she had a successful response rate when asking businesses to participate in the auction. According to Claggett, nearly 98% of people she asked jumped on board with the project and helped out with donated auction items.
“I think that that really shows the heartbeat of Licking County, which is, again, why I want to shout it out, because we have a special gem here,” Claggett said.
The day after the concert, Claggett and her family are going to pile up in a few different cars and roadtrip to the White House where Claggett will be performing during decorating for the Christmas season.
She applied back in August on a whim. With the exception of a few friends she asked to proofread her responses, she didn’t tell anyone she was applying, not expecting to receive the opportunity.
“I’ll never forget this day for as long as I live. September 3rd, I was busy. It was a Wednesday night. My sister and mom were in the kitchen at home, and I was standing there just checking my emails. And I saw this email and it just said a person’s name, and then it said, “Congratulations, you’ve been…. And I was like, ‘What is this?’ I thought it was fake.”
After opening the email, Claggett realized it was not fake — she was going to perform at the White House.
She announced this opportunity to the public at her concert in October.
“I was really careful about it because for some people it’s a divisive thing. That’s not the point of this. This is not the point of why I’m going to perform,” Claggett said.
Claggett is most excited to share this experience with her family. She looks forward to returning home and recounting her Washington, D.C. trip with local Licking County people.
Her connections to people in Licking County are what made the Licking County Harp Project possible. According to Claggett, many of these connections came when she worked at Plaza Pizza. She said how the Licking County Harp Project has unfolded has been raw and organic, and mostly based on the connections she formed through working at the pizza shop years ago.
“I did that for a whole five years. I think all those years were kind of the setup for this. Every season of our lives, every chapter of our lives is. It kind of leads into the next one, but you get to bring all that stuff with you. You get to bring all that knowledge and all of that stuff you learned. I think that as you mature and you grow, it helps you to connect dots,” Claggett said.
Claggett says herself, this project is “out of the box.”
“I don’t know if anybody has done this before. People have done it in different formats before. But I think that this is a unique twist on it, and I’m excited for it. It does make me a little nervous because it’s so ‘out of the box.’ But I think being nervous about a project is a good thing because it forces your mind to come up with different solutions for scenarios and to talk to different people,” Claggett said.
She thinks music, a universal language, is the way to do it.
“Even though this is so new and I don’t really have models to go off of, I have been blessed with the most incredibly special and creative people in my life. Working with those people will continue pushing this project forward because there’s no shortage of ideas,” Claggett said. “We’re going to let it come from ourselves. That’s the most beautiful part of it all.”
Claggett hopes the Licking County Harp Project will act as a model for other counties to pursue similar projects.
“I think that its roots being in community is what will force it to spark other ideas similar to this,” Claggett said.
She thinks it’s important people realize the project is community-based. It’s not about one person, it’s about the community as a whole.
“This is not about getting a million views on YouTube,” Claggett said. “This is genuinely about people. Because people matter.”
Ella Diehl writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.