What we do
At Wishing Well Music for Health, we:
- Enrich healthcare settings with live music-making interactions, supporting wellbeing through a shared musical experience.
- Provide training for musicians, healthcare professionals, medical students and volunteers
We work in partnership with NHS trusts across Sussex and Surrey, bringing live music interactions into hospitals and hospices. We work closely with healthcare staff to make sure that our approach is right for each individual person.
Where we work with babies, children and young people:
Special care baby units: Musicians surround premature babies in a very soft “envelope of sound”, support mothers to sing during “Kangaroo Care” and help to soften the clinical environment through very gentle singing and music.
Children’s hospitals and wards: Interactive music sessions at bedsides and play areas on high dependency, medical and surgical wards. We use voices, acoustic instruments and music technology and encourage as much participation as possible. Musicians use familiar songs and creative improvisation to help children and young people express themselves.
Respite and rehabilitation services: One to one and group sessions using accessible music technology to support children and young people with access needs.
Where we work with older people living with dementia:
Specialist hospital wards, community hospitals and assessment units: In these settings we use reminiscence repertoire and creative improvisation to bring familiar music and new cultural experiences to people living with dementia.  Every time we make music with people who are living with dementia we see the unique power that music has to unlock memories, helping people to connect outwards to the people around them again.
Training:
Musicians: we offer a Foundation Training programme and Mentor Programme for musicians wanting to use their skills in the healthcare environment.
Healthcare Professionals: we offer workshop sessions on using simple musical techniques that you can incorporate into practice.
Students: We offer a Music in Healthcare Module for 3rd year students at Brighton and Sussex Medical School offering experiential insights into the use of music to support children and their families whilst they are in hospital.
We support wellbeing in healthcare by creating environments that make people feel safe and by encouraging a healthcare culture that helps staff interact with the person, as well as treating the health condition.
We support the whole community around the patient, including families, care givers and staff in interactions and aim to improve the overall sound ecology of clinical spaces.
Please contact Director Jo White to talk about music in your setting: