News & Blog
As part of our Youth Music funded programme in children and young people’s healthcare settings, we’re excited to offer places on our Apprenticeship Programme throughout 2024.
Successful applicants will work alongside the Wishing Well team in one of our partner hospitals for 10 weeks, receiving additional support and training before and after their project. This is a paid opportunity to gain experience working with children, young people and families in acute healthcare and to acquire skills which are transferable to all aspects of a music-based portfolio career.
Criteria for Apprentices
- Have some experience/training in musical leadership in community settings.
- This is a paid opportunity so you need to be registered as self-employed and have public liability insurance in place (we can help you with both of those things if needed).
- A keen interest in bringing your music into acute healthcare settings, using your skills to support the wellbeing of the hospital community through connection, empowerment and expression.
- A good communicator and be keen to develope a “reflective” practice.
- To be available for a 10-week placement at one of our 2 partner hospitals in Haywards Health (mid-Sussex) or Brighton. (sessions are 2 hours long on a set day each week).
Placements
Chalk Hill, an in-patient CAMHs (child and adolescent mental health) ward in Haywards Heath (mid-Sussex), supporting our resident musician with one-to-one and small group sessions involving multi-instrumental work, composition, songwriting and production.
The Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, Brighton. Bedside music-making in children’s critical care and medical wards. Appropriate children’s repertoire and confidence with singing and percussion are essential.
How to Get Involved
This is a rolling programme throughout 2023/24. To register your interest in the programme, please email [email protected]
We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
During the autumn term, I had the joy of taking part in the apprenticeship programme with Bela at Forget Me Not, a dementia assessment unit, running community music workshops. This was an incredibly insightful experience for me. Working alongside Bela taught me so much about how to be a good community musician and the skills needed. Throughout the weeks, I felt more comfortable letting myself out of my own musical bubble to open myself to what was going on in the room. This experience also helped me to read the room and adapt to the energy and mood of the participants, but also making sure that everyone was as included as possible. There were a couple of instances when someone in the room had very high energy and was enjoying the free drumming whilst others wanted more repertoire-based music. Being able to discuss these decisions along with Bela and the OT’s after the sessions was very valuable to reflect on.
It was very interesting to notice the changes over the weeks in their engagement. Sometimes it was slight and sometimes we saw participants who had never actively engaged, sing entire songs to us and the group. One participant who was usually asleep during the sessions in her movable chair/bed sang the ‘Hokey Cokey’ from her bed after which the whole group joined and tried doing as many of the movements. I experienced so many beautiful moments during my apprenticeship there, and the feedback from the participants during the sessions reinforced that feeling of joy:
One participant who had been retreating to his room since his arrival told us after his first music session during which he very actively engaged with the drums “You are all my brothers and sisters. When I am with my brothers and sisters, I can do anything”. The same participant told us after his second music session. “I feel happy. Before, I felt sad”. Another participant in the female ward said to us after her first session “I’ve never experienced anything like it. We just all improvised. We didn’t know each other and it all came together beautifully. It’s the power of music and the power of people”.
We are looking for new Trustees to complement our existing board.
What is a Trustee?
Trustees have overall control of a charity and are responsible for making sure it’s doing what it was set up to do. They may be known as other titles such as directors; board members, committee members; governors. Whatever they are called, trustees are the people who lead the charity and decide how it is run.
Benefits
- Be part of a small team making a big difference to healthcare settings across Sussex.
- Contribute your knowledge and experience to an organisation with real expertise in bringing arts and health together in partnership.
- All expenses covered.
Although not essential, we particularly encourage applications from people with ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds, disabilities and lived experience of the following;
- Lived experience of caring for someone living with dementia.
- Lived experience of caring for a child with health or mental health challenges.
We meet in-person four times a year in Brighton, although extra time in between meetings might be needed as appropriate.
For more information see our Trustee Opportunity Pack
To discuss joining our Board, please email Jo White: [email protected]
We look forward to hearing from you!
Congratulations and big thanks to all 38 students who completed our ‘Music and the Future Doctor’ module this year!
We provide an elective module and Brighton and Sussex Medical School, which includes essential learning for future doctors in using a hospital musicians’ approach to building trust and rapport with patients and families. This ultimately leads to better clinical care.
We use examples from our decade of working with people in hospitals to explore the change when access to live, participatory music is included in hospital care.
We have, as ever, learned a lot from your discussions and presentations. Good luck with your ongoing studies!
Thank you, Janet Lee and Kamal Patel who helped us create and assess this course & Bela Emerson for leading the course.
I really enjoyed the rewarding nature of working as a musician in the hospital. Every session was new and I would come away feeling a sense of pride, hoping that I made any bit of difference to the children or parents that I’d seen that day. Music is such a powerful tool that can both bring out different emotions in people but also completely takes you out of the world for a small amount of time. This is why I love music so much, it stops the busy ‘chattering’ in my mind and allows me to feel instantly calm. Nothing else matters at that moment.
All of the children I saw at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital were very young so it was sometimes hard to tell if the music made a difference to them, but then on occasions, the children were dancing and playing instruments with us with a smile on their faces, uplifted by the music. These were such lovely moments to experience! The parents were so grateful, saying things like “Thank you so much! He’s loving it!” and would dance with them with big smiles across the child and parents’ faces. It was lovely seeing the staff smile and dance along as we passed through the corridors, playing nursery rhymes and songs that they knew.
I met little children with so much medical equipment (oxygen masks, wires, etc), which was sad to see, and a couple of times babies were desperately trying to take all of the equipment off. We tried our best to comfort and distract the babies and parents in a situation like this with music. I was shocked to see this because I had never been to a hospital and seen this level of equipment before, but I soon adjusted. By the second session, I felt completely comfortable and Marina (my mentor) and I spoke about everything we’d experienced after each session which was really useful.
Seeing the sadness and worry of the parents in the ward, I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be them. It really put things into perspective and made me want to make an impact in any way possible. Sharing music with the children and families was my way to do that.
It’s been a beautifully busy year for our incredible Wishing Well musicians, who have been making music with families and their babies, young people, older people and people living with dementia.
We are so grateful that this year we have been able to work face-to-face with our participants for the entire year. COVID is still very much present in hospitals, but restrictions are slowly easing. We are still wearing masks, but we have also been able to hold a hand, dance and play musical instruments together again – this has been a joy!
2022 was the year we became a registered charity, put our 3 year strategy in place and talked to our hospital partners about the ever growing need for music making to make life better for our hospital communities..
Our Wishing Well family grew this year! We welcomed a comms assistant, a fundraiser and a fourth Trustee to our Board.
We have exciting plans for 2023. More on that to come…
Here are some of the things we’ve been up to in 2022:
We are beyond grateful for all the support we have received. It means we are able to bring so magical musical joy to people in healthcare settings for another year!