Arts Council grant for music at Share

Share has been awarded a grant of £9,568 by awarded by the Arts Council England National Lottery towards the costs of a Rhythm and Tunes music project.

This project will support our students to develop crucial life skills through music and will comprise weekly music therapy workshops at Share, participation in a scheme run by the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in central London, individual music tuition, participant performances, a number of educational trips and live concerts at Share specially designed for people with learning disabilities and autism. 

The therapeutic music workshops enable our students to experiment with playing different instruments and percussion, learn about different genres, compose music, and practice moving and dancing to different rhythms and styles. The funding will also enable us to provide individual tuition in learning an instrument and work towards public performances.

The funding will facilitate our participation in 'LSO Create', which enables disabled people to make music and perform with LSO musicians, as well as our partnership with 'Live Music Now' to host concerts at Share in safe environments that cater to people’s special sensory needs.

Our aim is to empower disabled people to participate in and access high quality music activities. In our experience, music serves as a tool to build life skills, reduce stress, promote communication, build confidence, encourage listening and team work, and reduce isolation.

As part of the project, we also hope to challenge the low expectations that families/carers and the wider public frequently might have about disabled people’s creative talents.

The project will build on the successes of our previous music activities, which have led to, for example, people who are mute at Share speaking for the first time, and those with crippling social anxiety learning how to interact and communicate with others.

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