The Music Therapist leading this project is Kate Fawcett, who has made time this week to reflect on this project.  Read a short extract from her blog below, or read her writing in full.

Kate writes: 

“I’m delighted to be working on my first project for Music as Therapy International, with new partners Livability – a UK disability charity committed to enabling children, young people and adults to live a life that adds up for them. 

Three care staff have been identified in advance as being particularly likely to benefit from training and there is also a body of agency staff whose confidence appears to flourish when they encounter music.

Livability Horizons has an explicitly person-centred philosophy which encourages residents to make choices about what they want to do – in between mealtimes and necessary care procedures there is very much a “go with the flow” attitude which means that planning specific sessions at set times doesn’t feel like the best fit here.  Instead, there is a large room which seems to be the most logical space for musical activity and I find that if I base myself loosely here, people tend to wander in and out, or pass through on wheelchair circuits of the building, increasingly stopping to explore the instruments.   I can also actively invite people to come specifically to engage in music. 

One of the carers expresses a wish to revive and develop his basic guitar skills and I’ve been help him to get going with this again.  Another is particularly drawn to the sound of the metallophone and we’ve been exploring how she might use the different moods she can hear to match her sense of what might suit particular residents.  Despite professing herself to be “not really very musical”, she seems to have an instinctive grasp of how music might enable a sense of companionship. I pile the instruments tidily in a corner of the large room when I leave each week, telling staff that they are very welcome to use them.  I am delighted that each time I return not only are they scattered all over the place, but also at least one has left the room altogether.  Somebody is using them!”

The participating staff and Kate have a few more weeks together to consolidate new skills, to continue putting new ideas into practice, and to think about how the staff can keep music going in the Home after our project ends.  Unlike some of our projects, which lead to participating staff running regular music groups, here there is the opportunity to see music laced through the lives of individual young adults, at moments when it could be most meaningful to them. 

Our thanks to everyone involved for their courage to try new things, their willingness to share their skills and knowledge with each other, and their patient navigation of rotas, competing care demands to make the most of their time together during the project.

Read Kate’s full blog.