Leading a mental health inclusive choir: A Musical Director's perspective

Written By Nicola Wydenbach

MY JOURNEY TO LEADING THE MIND AND SOUL COMMUNITY CHOIR

I have been the Musical Director of the Mind and Soul Community Choir, a mental health inclusive choir, since 2018. The choir was founded in 2006, through an initial grant from the Maudsley Charity to promote mental wellbeing through singing. The choir workshops are normally held on the Maudsley Hospital Site. The Maudsley is part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust which specialises in mental health. The choir promotes mental wellbeing through singing to reduce the stigma around mental illness. Our membership is for adults over the age of 18 and comprises mental health service users, families and relatives of service users, staff, former staff, and members of the local community. There is no commitment and we run on a drop-in basis.

“it was the “first time singing without being told off”!”

Following a recent outreach project on one of the acute wards at the Maudsley, feedback from participants (choir members and service users from the wards) was 100 percent positive. We used feedback forms to collect the opinions of the participants at the end of the project. One of the participants wrote that the choir was “good for a different mood - expressing yourself”, another commented that it was the “first time singing without being told off”.

LEADING THE CHOIR

I have never been trained to specifically work with people with mental health issues. I have learnt along the way. I started delivering workshops for an extraordinary charity called Streetwise Opera who use music as an intervention for people who have been affected by homelessness. They had a fantastic programme of training leaders and I learnt much of my group community practise from this organisation. In 2014, I was asked to set up a wellbeing choir in conjunction with West Kent Mind in Kent, again for people who had again been affected by mental health issues. It is now called The D’Vine Singers.

Working so closely with people with mental health issues enabled me to adapt my practice accordingly, and I learnt much by trial and error. I had not had any previous experience of setting up a choir for a project, but once the funding for the initial project had finished the members wanted to continue. It was a sink or swim situation. Alongside my co-musical director, we quickly learnt how to write funding applications, how to set up and constitute a committee , set up a bank account as well as keep up the delivery of the weekly workshop. I suddenly had to learn a whole new skill set and there was nowhere for specific training in these matters. But all of this experience lead me to be able to take over the Mind and Soul Choir in 2018. I know now how to work with a committee, how to fundraise for projects, who to work and promote an inclusive mental health choir.

Being the musical director of the Mind and Soul Choir is not only an enormous privilege but immense fun. Although you are in a different role to the participants, you quickly become part of a supportive and inclusive community. One of the best parts of leading the choir has been performing at amazing venues such as the Globe Theatre, the Union Chapel and the Southbank in London. There are challenges balancing the individual needs of participants while at the same time keeping the musical momentum of the choir, but the role is so rewarding that the obstacles are definitely worth it. When the UK first went into a national lockdown in March 2020, I missed everyone’s faces, energy and the family feel. Luckily by May 2020, we had started meeting virtually which went part of the way to make up for missing the benefits of in person singing. But we can’t wait to meet live!

THE VALUE OF RESEARCH

I would like to see more choirs like the Mind and Soul Choir being established across the country. More people with mental health issues should be able to benefit from singing inclusively together. But where do we find choir leaders who are able to lead these choirs? What do we need to do to equip and support these choir leaders? Research is essential to understand the needs of the leaders for these choirs.

Partly because of these questions, I have recently begun a MSc in performance science at the Royal College of Music to help me to start working on this. I have also taken on the role of research assistant in this March Network Plus funded project (Singing Side By Side), in which we will be exploring the perspectives of singers and choir leaders who are involved in mental health inclusive choirs. Based on our research findings, we will develop and share a set of resources for choir leaders, perhaps including some of the information and support that I would have found helpful when I first started working in this area.

“Considering how mental health issues are on the rise due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this work could not be more timely”

Through this research project, and the resources that we develop as a result, we will be able to help new and existing leaders to feel confident about including people with mental health issues in their own choirs or new choirs. If we can make the process easier by providing more support and resources for choir leaders, then more people might set up effective mental health inclusive choirs, and more people with mental health issues can benefit from taking part in group singing.

Considering how mental health issues are on the rise due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this work could not be more timely.

We will announce details of how to take part our online survey soon, so if you are interested in finding out more about the project you can email us or give us a follow!