Room to Room Music is a creative music-making project for care home residents living with dementia who are physically isolated in their rooms. Residents invite musicians into their room where they use musical improvisation to create moments of shared connection inspired by movements, words or physical presence.
This term, Open Academy Fellows have been invited to participate in the project, where they perform with CLS musicians to Jewish Care home residents across London. This gives our Fellows the opportunity to learn from professional players in real world situations and apply the theoretical learning that they have acquired in their previous studies.
On this project and the Academy's partnership with CLS, Head of Open Academy Julian West commented:
'Our partnership with CLS offers extremely valuable learning for Open Academy Fellows. There is very often a considerable leap in the Fellows’ understanding and skills following a placement with CLS, as well as an acceleration in their development and a growth in confidence.
'CLS’s participatory work focuses and specialises in the area of health and wellbeing. This is a field where there is now strong research which supports the efficacy of the arts, and where opportunities exist for musicians to develop areas of work. It is important that our Fellows are aware of best practice in this field, and CLS is most definitely an organisation that has been and remains at the cutting edge, developing activity with some of the most underserved communities.'
Open Academy's partnership with CLS began in 2020, when Fellows were placed in the artistic teams of the orchestra's 'Sound Young Minds' programme. This programme, which won the RPS Impact Award in 2020, saw our Fellows working with young people in residential psychiatric care, helping them to express themselves through creative music-making alongside CLS players. Former Fellows who were involved in this programme, including Hugo Lau, Helen Kuby, Josie Campbell, Mared Pugh Evans, Holly Isherwood and Camille Curtis, have since been invited back to work with the orchestra on other participation projects.
