This study explores the ambiguity of musical interventions in the context of a strategic change. While it is often stated that arts-based intervention can broaden participants’ understanding and mind, leading to transformative experiences, it can also heighten participants’ exposure and vulnerability, calling for a critical investigation of the underlying dynamics. Drawing theoretical insights from affect theory, we conceptualize musical interventions as affective atmospheres that develop their potential for strategic change through resonance. Empirically, we follow the unfolding dynamic of a musical intervention in a Finnish healthcare organization to explore what mobilizes bodies to attune to and align with strategic objectives. In our analysis, we draw on the notion of vulnerability to help make sense of the dynamics that either create affective resonance or block such resonance, reducing the intervention’s vibration among participating bodies. Our study contributes to the growing interest in applying affect theory to questions of strategy-as-practice by discussing the limits of curating and sustaining affective atmospheres for strategic change. It concludes by calling for an ethics of care approach to minimize the potential harm that vulnerable bodies involved in arts-based interventions can experience.
