Britten Pears Arts Creative Health Review 2023

It's been a busy year at Britten Pears Arts for Creative Health.

Music in Later Life

To start 2023 we held an Enquiry Residency with artists in our Participate programme. The outcome of which was a celebration of people's lives in Suffolk Stories Retold by the Tale Collectors.

We also held a ThinkTank reflecting on Music in Later Life. Our three key areas of focus in this ThinkTank were on knowledge, principles of practice and reach. There is a great deal of evidence as to the impact and efficacy of music in later life. We need to build resources on sustainable, scalable and replicable approaches, training and skills. We need to find better ways of measuring impact and demonstrating the value of music. Funders, commissioners and policy makers can benefit from not only speaking to people who are in receipt of this work, but also those who deliver it. Creative arts are often reticent to be seen in a utilitarian way, but tangible health benefits can be measured as a result of participation. Music enables connection, creativity and choice in later life. It brings benefits to participants and carers. We need to develop an infrastructure that supports broader reach so that we can all lead creative and nourishing later lives.

Supporting musicians

In March we held an MOT retreat for musicians working in challenging settings. Called MOTs, these provide rejuvenation, inspiration and support for musicians working in a variety of settings. Our MOTs are retreats that give busy professional musicians the time, space and resources to gain perspective on their career, re-inspire their artistic instincts and address any technical, physical or psychological challenges they may be facing. Here's what a recent participant said:

“[It’s a] ‘before and after’ moment in my working life. Having the time to give such deep thought to my practise and how it sits in my creative world, is something that I feel has shifted something deeply. Sharing struggles, strategies and resources with other people who have such a combined wealth of experience, under expert guidance has refreshed my outlook and opened up possibilities for needed change.”

Applications are open until 2 January for our next MOT for Musicians working in challenging settings. Apply here

Over the summer we turned our attention to the wellbeing of musicians in a ThinkTank called Musicians Matter. Musicians’ wellbeing is intrinsically bound up with questions of equity and social justice. Despite pockets of inspiring progress, we see a distressing lack of common cause on these vital topics across music in the UK. We need to come together across the multiple sectors that make up this industry – music education, publishing, the commercial sector, the subsidised sector, community music, creative health and more – to commit to musician wellbeing, to identify and replicate good practice in wellbeing equity, invest in musicians’ wellbeing. We see potential to build an alliance-based campaign based on a commitment model through which institutions and individuals would pledge to ensure the wellbeing equity (welfare and wellbeing) of musicians they work with, employ or commission. From attitude change we aim to inspire behaviour change – by coming together as an industry, we believe we can help all musicians to flourish.

Sparking conversations and cross sector working

Part of our Creative Health work involves supporting cross sector working, training and collaboration and we hosted Sing to Beat Parkinson's training here in March. This is a great complement to our existing Skylarks programme

Following on from our earlier ThinkTank on Music in Criminal Justice Settings we ran an online Spark! event to generate wider conversations.

Another Spark! event launched University of Suffolk report mapping music education in Suffolk. The report, commissioned by Britten Pears Arts with support from Suffolk Music Hub and Norfolk & Norwich Festival Bridge, is set to be influential in helping schools plan their music education in future, and inform the future commissioning of music hub provision in the region.

Towards the end of the year, as part of the National Singing Symposium, and in a week where we celebrated 10 years of Friday Afternoons - a Britten Pears Arts led singing project connecting teachers and young people with contemporary composers through creating high quality repertoire resources and training – we recognised that singing in schools has changed significantly in the last decade; the government has released new model music curriculum and a new national plan for music education. We held a Spark! event, we took the opportunity to explore the singing ecology for young people at a pivotal point in music education.??

Looking ahead to 2024

We have so much more to share with you in 2024.

In 2024 Britten Pears Arts is exploring the theme of Compassionate Communities in relation to end of life, grief and loss across all strands of our activity. Loss touches us all at some point in our lives. Working closely with St Elizabeth Hospice we are planning a series of activities and music programming to help build compassionate communities.?

The aim of the Compassionate Communities movement is to acknowledge the major but under-recognised, the least spoken about, and the often-overlooked human experiences in all communities of serious illness, ageing, dying, caregiving and loss. We hope to explore this through music programming, community work, heritage and archive, volunteering, training, environment, and visual arts.?

We recognise that music plays a vital role in processing grief and loss and a medium through which we can give voice to expressions of loss. Our wider activity and unique environment can also lend itself to creative and healing experiences.?

At Britten Pears Arts we are committed to building a music industry that is democratic, inclusive, holistic and accessible to all; enabling everyone’s right to a vibrant cultural life.

We believe that one of the levers for change is a fresh approach to leadership – so we want to help shape the future of the music industry by investing in emerging leaders in the field.

Britten Pears Arts’ Future Leaders’ Learning Retreat is our first programme designed to address this vision. We are eager to learn from this initial cohort and to develop and refine the offer for future iterations.

We continue our cross sector collaborations hosting Magic Acorns Early Years Incubate weekend with Takeshi Matsumoto. And continuing our partnership with Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research Anglia Ruskin University running a CPD in Collaborative Music Practice for Health. As well as running a Spark! event on Regional Creative Health and Compassionate Communities. And ThinkTanks on Music and Neurodiversity and Music and AI.

If you want to keep in touch and find out more about our Creative Health work do contact me and sign up to our newsletter.