Project title
Description of initiative
Plymouth Music Zone (PMZ) is an award winning music charity that believes in the power of music to reach out and help transform the lives of some of the most vulnerable children, young people and adults across Plymouth and beyond. The ‘Keep Singing, Keepsake’ Project (KKP) works with older people in a range of residential and community settings. A weekly group singing session was designed to strengthen social ties and improve emotional wellbeing among the participants. CDs and DVDs were made from the sessions to give to families and friends as keepsakes. The keepsakes provided an historical record of the project and information for others who wish to consider similar work. The project also aimed to promote intergenerational communication and understanding via opportunities for these singing groups to perform with groups of young people working with Plymouth Music Zone.
Further information on the initiative
Themes: Culture and...
Keywords
Target group
Cultural field
Timeframe
Results, benefits, impact and lessons learnt
The study of KKP reveals that for its participants it is extremely successful in meeting its key aims of promoting emotional wellbeing and reducing social isolation. It also seems to be carefully building intergenerational performance. The participants take great pleasure in KKP and the benefits last well beyond the duration of the weekly session. The music leaders respect and interact well with the participants, respond to any concerns expressed by staff and take considerable trouble in planning sessions. Rather than seeing KKP as a passive experience where good is done to the elderly it should be understood as facilitating older people’s active engagement in an ongoing relationship with song. In this way, it reconnects older people with the past but also generates dispositions to learn new things and make new connections. KKP provides good value both in terms of money and social benefits. It also demonstrates great potential to develop further, both in expanding to more settings and in further developing certain aspects, in particular intergenerational performance. There are also exciting possibilities in linking KKP to other forms of learning experience which would be well worth exploring.