Orchestras in Healthcare Report

I was interested to read the Orchestras in Healthcare report by the Association for British Orchestras.

I work as the lead evaluator and critical friend (through Sound Connections) on the City of London Sinfonia's Sound Young Minds project. This project is the current holder of the Royal Philharmonic Society's Impact Award, and is expanding this year to cover all of the London and the South East through partnerships with the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, Chelsea and Westminster NHS and Cambridge University Hospitals.

This is critical work that supports children and young people through music at a particularly vulnerable and challenging time in their lives. Bringing high quality music, facilitation skills, and trauma informed practice into these settings - particularly through the pandemic - has been moving to evaluate and observe.

With health professionals predicting a huge rise in mental health issues for young people as a result of the pandemic, music has a powerful role in not only supporting wellbeing, but providing healing.