Rachel’s Blog

I’m just home from a residential care home, having led a short ‘taster’ session. It was seriously challenging as well as being enjoyable too.

It is a fairly large residential care home, with a fantastic ethos – the activities co-ordinator frequently takes some of the residents to the pub! As with larger numbers of people, there is bound to be a greater diversity of people in terms of their abilities/limitations. Having previously met some of the residents, I wasn’t quite prepared (in terms of variety of songs/resources) to cater for the different levels that I found there. Although the session went reasonably smoothly, and part of the reason for this taster session was to gauge people’s needs, I was disappointed that I had not been able to engage with every person, and draw them into what I hoped to be an enjoyable and uplifting musical experience.

Having said this, many participants did enjoy themselves. Some were singing along and using percussion instruments to beat (or shake) in time. I think a small change of mixing up the people of different abilities would help enormously, as it would enable the less able people to feel more involved.

Key Learning:

• Take in more material than you plan to use, including songs of varying complexity, from the very simple, to the more difficult.
• Develop songs or activities to assess people’s different levels.
• Underline the importance of a tailored music session and emphasise the point of a taster session
• Don’t be afraid to ask staff for small changes in the set-up. They want the sessions to be positive, as much as you do.
• Enjoy it! Even if you feel like you are struggling, keep going, keep being enthusiastic, don’t give up.

I love singing and this project is so much fun for me, let alone the participants! Watching older people engage in a creative experience is very rewarding. Seeing them smile and laugh, and ask to take the song-sheets home at the end is such a joy, for me, and for them. But what else? The Silver Song Club model, run across the South-East region by the charity Sing For Your Life has pioneered singing for older people and have developed, from extensive evaluation of its clubs, a set of criteria:

1. Initiate one-to-one welcoming

2. Invoke memories

3. Stimulate fine motor skills

4. Stimulate grand motor skills

5. Encourage social interaction

6. Encourage client leadership

7. Provide progressive learning outcomes

8. Provide platforms for reminiscence dialogue

9. Give free choice

10. Cover multicultural material

11. Encourage shared performance


(from the Sing for Your Life website)

These criteria help shape workshops which engage with individuals through physical and mental stimulation, no matter what their circumstances/abilities, as well as helping facilitate interaction between the participants, and develop community. Having been involved for a little while with a Silver Song Club, the intentionality of some of these criteria can be fantastic to shape what could simply be a sing-along into something with more structure and purpose. However, it can run the risk of being formulaic, lacking in spontaneity as well as being a little bit patronising. Despite this, it is an extremely good checklist for workshops, particularly those  for older older people.

The group I work with in Witney is a younger group, and on the whole everyone is still physically fit, living independently and not really needing a lot of the above criteria. Most of the participants stay on for a gentle exercise class afterwards, so I try and focus on singing new songs, on engaging their creativity by asking them to come up with new verses or actions, and on harmony singing which many find takes a lot of concentration.

It is my hope to develop my own tools and frameworks to help me when planning workshops for groups that have different needs.

On 28th October I joined a Singing for the Brain session supported by the Alzheimers Society. It was a cold, rainy day, but despite this there was a good number of people there – 20 in total with 9 clients and 11 carers/musicians/volunteers. The session began with tea and cake and as people arrived they were given name labels.

An opening song welcomed everybody and affirmed each person by name – always an important aspect of building relationships within a group. An interesting action to this song was to pass around a long ribbon which each person held – and then for everyone to raise their arms, guiding people’s hands with the ribbon, if they were unsure or unco-ordinated for any reason, and it was a way of linking each person together.

My criticism of the session was that it perhaps ‘rattled through’ the repertoire a bit too quickly. We really covered a lot of songs and at times I had the feeling that the clients’ voices were being ‘pasted over’. Another aspect which I, and perhaps others, found difficult was the noise level, especially during the songs which included percussion instruments. This may have been because of the acoustics of the room.

A real challenge for people providing participatory music for older people with dementia is being able to guide them through repertoire in a way which allows that person to express themselves and to engage with others around them.

This session was enjoyed by most of the participants present. It also felt like a great way of bringing together carers going through similar situations. One woman I spoke to who was caring for her husband who had had a stroke commented most strongly on the social aspect of the singing group, and the importance of being with other people, which ties in with a school of thought that social relationships are a major determinant on health.