In early 2022, we announced our hopes to build on the success of Music Helps, planning to extend its reach and relevance to home and professional caregivers here in the UK. The online training course was originally designed to provide caregivers of Indian heritage an accessible introduction into the role of music in dementia care. We felt confident that with some carefully considered cultural adaptions, the course could help to inspire caregivers across the UK to embed music into their daily care practice.

Our review process started at the end of 2022, carefully combing through the existing course content, closely reading through scripts, considering where we might adapt illustrations and video components for a UK care context, and mapping out our project plan.

Now over six months on, we are well underway with the creation of new course content and, excitingly, seeing the project really start to take shape.

We were grateful that music therapist Nina Cherla, who led the creation of Music Helps India, was again willing to turn her hand to illustrating a new set of UK images for us, providing both courses with a congruous look and feel. It’s been a lot of fun considering the types of cultural landmarks, references, and music extracts which might hold relevance to a multicultural UK audience. Not everyone participating in the course will be employed by a care home, and not everyone will have grown up in the UK. Although our office is in London, we have to keep in mind that life is different in different parts of the country. Whatever your faith, heritage, or background, everyone is individual, and we need to avoid stereotypes and assumptions. Nina has been doing a brilliant job of turning our myriad of requests into beautifully crafted images, bringing the whole course to life.

Another aspect of course development has been the creation of new videos, highlighting a range of personal perspectives from both home and professional carers, as well as roleplay demonstrations. We are incredibly grateful to the willing volunteers who have offered to contribute their experiences of caring for a person living with dementia, including the role that music has to play. We are grateful to Home Instead Wandsworth, Lambeth & Dulwich for their support and we are looking to working with some of their caregivers next month.

We’ve also made good progress with recording the script narration, with our brilliant Trustee, Jane, voicing the UK course. I have really enjoyed taking my first foray into the worlds of audio editing and video creation, made a lot less daunting thanks to YouTube video tutorials!

There is plenty still to do and inevitably many further learning curves along the way – but I am very excited to continue through to its completion, and for the course pilot to make its way to caregivers across the country.

We are grateful to the Utley Foundation, David Mayhew, and Jonathan Quin for their support of this project.