Music in the community task one

I spoke to Kevin Bowman from Reaction music, a music making community interest company.  (CIC) Kev is a music making community facilitator who works with many community groups in order to support them to experience music.

Kev has told me that this type of work is very rewarding, as he has worked in prisons, with neet people (not in education employment or training), in acute wards and in nursing homes.  Some people, who were prescribed medications for anxiety and other mental health disorders, have been prescribed with social prescribing, by bringing in funding to get music or theatrical community groups to come in.

There are many specific purposes of omuuinity music projects such as stimulating people who can’t socialise, helping people to express themselves and their emotions, bringing people therapy in a creative way, helping people to socialise with others in similar situations, creating positivity, and improving or triggering memories for those suffering with Dementia or Alzheimer’s.

As part of Kevin's job, he works with a wide variety of areas, such as acute mental health, late stage dementia, people in care homes, schools, prisons, and young offenders institutes.

Before working with the group, Kevin has to have an initial meeting with the manager or sister in charge, so that he can tailor the workshop to fit the group's needs.  Some objectives are boosting people's employability skills, team work, helping people to exchange ideas, and furthering their life skills.

A community music tutor also facilitates in the workshop too.  Sometimes, a session is challenging, particularly with neet.  On the other hand, some sessions are more laid back, for example people who don't want to work with drums or loud precussion.  In these instances Kev has to bring Djembe drums and does an acute session.

Kevin has to also write reports to evaluate after the sessions, to mark progress.  The managers, sisters or person in charge of the group itself have to then fill out evaluation forms to mark the progress and positive effect on the group.  These evaluations prured that the members of the group were less anxious, they were making new friendships, and in some cases the people didn't need their medication.  There is a large benefit to certain individuals throughout many projects.

I have done my own research about community music.  It is an increasingly popular type of therapy, with companies like Music Pool Hefordd, community music Wales, and Sound Sense which is an organisation that promotes community music as a therapz.  It also has connections with community dance, and my personal interest which is community or applied drama/theatre.

I have also had a previous personal experience with community music.  In my home area, there was a youth centre and we had some community musicians there to help us learn to cooperate together, and make songs.  This version of communally music was more acoustic, with some precussion but also mainly vocal.  The facilitator would let us ea pick a phrase or sentence, and ha then put them all together inbba song, which united our ideas.

Soon, we must plan our own community music session, so that we can have a taster of what it is like to facilitate a community session at a care home.