About
About Rachel’s Blog
This is my blog, a place where I will be reflecting on and sharing my learning journey, and hopefully where you might want to join in by sharing some of your thoughts in the comments boxes. The blog reflects the nature of process-focussed (as opposed to product-focussed) working and is therefore a work in progress.
This blog is primarily about my development as a musician/artist concerned with community, health and wellbeing. This blog is also about tracking changes in the health and community landscape to find out if the arts are being taken more seriously as an effective tool for change, both on an individual health level, and on a wider social level, and how these ‘levels’ are connected.
I hope if you are practicing in a similar field, or simply interested in the wider contextualisation of the arts, 
you will find this blog useful. If you would like to take part in more discussion around singing and wellbeing, then there is a posterous site set up at www.wellsing.org.uk – you can post content to this site by sending an email to wellsing@posterous.com.
About Rachel
I am 26 and I live in Oxford with my husband Tim Davies (www.timdavies.org.uk). In 2009 I took the step of going full-time self-employed as a community musician, so my days are spent developing resources for use in workshop sessions, exploring my own musicianship, conversing with different groups and oganisations, and the best bit, face-to-face work leading singing sessions. I also enjoy cycling, swimming, walking, and cooking, when not ‘musicking’. I also play violin in a String Quartet called The Oxford Four and I am currently training as a Music Therapist at Nordoff Robbins.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when I knew I wanted to pursue a career in music, it simply seemed unimaginable to do anything else. I studied music at Canterbury Christ Church University, and benefited from the varied course content which gave me ample opportunity to perform both in a solo capacity, and in large and small ensembles, as well as the chance to explore the role of music in contexts other than the concert hall or practise room.
It was a combination of my developing passion for social justice, stemming from a trip to India, and the realisation of the social importance of music-making that helped me decide to move towards the broad sector of ‘community arts’, and in 2007 I completed a postgraduate diploma in community arts practice.
You can read more about my previous work here.