Work with Care Homes

Our work with people in residential care brings together aspects of reminiscence and oral testimony with music-making. We can attend single events or extended projects.

This section focuses on our work with older people, but we offer workshops suitable for any group who is socially dependent and in residential care, e.g. people with learning disabilities, looked after children.

A typical one-off visit to a residential home will include sharing some songs, led by the Wren community musician. We’ll also listen out for songs that residents know or remember, to see if we have them in our repertoire.

Each visit also includes some aspect of active music-making on instruments. Some residents may have learned as a child, others may be new to them, but we like to offer a bit of a challenge to stimulate learning and physical dexterity.

The Musical Scrapbook

This project extends the one-off visit to returning visits over four to six weeks. It includes researching the songs suggested by the residents and talking more about them. Residents share where they learned the song, and recall details such as where they lived, what age they were, whether they were in school or working, and in what occupation.

We collate this information and try to collect and copy photographs, putting it all together in a scrapbook for the home to keep. We can also make a sing-a-long CD and lyric sheets if required.

For The Record

An EU funded project promoting social inclusion by using the memories of old people in residential care as the stimulus for whole community creative activity. The pandemic, like for many projects has put meeting for this project on a two year hold, but as we emerge out the other side we have started to meet once again and have been very impressed by all the work our Europena friends and partners have managed to accomplish given the difficult circumstances. A closed project at the moment, we hope to roll it out over the coming years.

Interested in us attending your residential setting?

We can structure packages to fit your situation. Contact us to discuss your requirements and costs.