Project title
Description of initiative
City of London Sinfonia is a London based orchestra, which has a year-round participation programme of ‘in-the-moment’ and creative music-making projects with professional musicians at its heart. This includes a residency at the Bethlem and Maudsley psychiatric hospital school.
City of London Sinfonia musicians have been engaging in creative music making projects with students and staff at Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School for the past years. The young people are all service users at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and have a range of severe psychiatric and mental health diagnoses. In the last year a major post-doctoral research programme with King’s College London has begun around the project.
Further information on the initiative
Themes: Culture and...
Keywords
Target group
Cultural field
Timeframe
Results, benefits, impact and lessons learnt
Engaging a young person with a severe mental illness in any project activity is the project’s biggest measure of success. It is also the key to unlocking each young person’s potential. Engagement comes in many forms from something as simple as choosing to enter or stay in the classroom, through interacting with fellow students and adults who are part of the group and focusing for a few moments on an activity, to creatively exploring the instruments and technology we provide, listening to each other, making a creative choice and responding and being part of group compositions.