“Music makes me feel powerful” was a lyric from one of the participants of our songwriting workshops, in partnership with Leeds Teaching Hospital Youth Service. Our pilot project at the hospital was a success with patients, families and staff. The pilot started with a training session for the Youth Work team, led by our experienced musicians Jess and Tom. The team enjoyed writing their own sea-shanty together, and getting a taste of how the workshops would support the young patients in their own song-writing. For this project, the sessions were based in the Place 2 Be, the base room for the Youth Service in LGI. We ran six sessions, and in each session different patients, their families, playworkers and youth workers were able to join. Many of the young people who access Place 2 Be have long-term chronic or complex medical conditions which means they spend a long time in the hospital or attending appointments, missing out on opportunities to access activities with their peers. Their world has often shrunk to the hospital, and for some young people, their ward or even their bed. The participants were actively encouraged to bring their own musical influences and tastes to the songwriting, reflecting their individuality and the parts of themselves that are not only about their medical history.
One young patient, Lucy, and her playworker, Kirsty, were able to attend all the sessions. Lucy is a long-term patient at the hospital. Making music allowed her to express her frustration and boredom at being isolated in hospital, as well as helping her to build meaningful connections with other patients. She took the lead on the lyrics for the song ‘Monday’ (the sessions were all on Mondays!):
‘Monday, oh Mondays
Back to school on Monday
One day after Sunday
Followed by Tuesday
Wear 100 colours everyday
Watch TV everyday
Positivity everyday
Banging that drum everyday
Having a dance everyday.’
The head of the Youth Service shared that the project allowed the patients to ‘feel like a young person and have fun’. Feedback from the young people was that it made them ‘feel happy’, it was ‘amazing’ and they ‘loved it’. It was important to include families in the sessions as appropriate, as we saw the lift and the respite it gave to parents, carers and siblings, and how it was a vital opportunity for them to connect as a family outside of the medical and care environment. It has also encouraged one family to engage with the youth service in other projects and made accessing the hospital a bit less intimidating for them.
The project culminated in a performance as part of the Youth Service summer showcase event in August. Lucy and Kirsty were able to join us to share some of the songs they helped to write, and a few new patients joined in a short music session in the foyer of the hospital. Both Lucy and Kirsty asked when we would be back, as they had missed the regular sessions. We hope to return to do a longer project with the hospital and to be able to visit the wards. Being able to expand the project to the wards means those young people with the most complex medical needs, or other needs such as sensory processing or neurodiversity, can also experience and engage with the musicians. We hope it will show how music can be used to support the health and wellbeing of young patients, in a way that more traditional interventions cannot.
