Winner of the 2020 RPS Impact Award
Sound Young Minds encourages young people to refocus their attention away from illness and, through improvisation, move towards the immediate and spontaneous.
‘Imagine you are a young person in a psychiatric hospital. All the people you work with – the doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists – are focusing on the reason why you are there and the illness. What your musicians do is create something with a young person that exists outside of everything they do with those specialists. You are accessing the healthy part of that person.’
—School staff member
Young people who participate in this programme are some of the most severely mentally unwell young people in England. Illnesses range in severity and complexity, including but not limited to psychosis, schizophrenia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, eating disorders, and bipolar disorder. This can present in the young people as extreme depression, anxiety, mood swings, withdrawal, self-harm, and suicidal ideations. Hospital stays generally are transient, with some young people staying for a few months, others for years.
Sound Young Minds began in 2017 as a partnership between the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School and now includes Lavender Walk Adolescent Mental Health Unit, CAMHS Campus School at Springfield as well as the Pilgrim Pathways School in Cambridge and London East Alternative Provision.
Experienced workshop leaders and CLS musicians facilitate a series of exploratory and improvisatory music and sound-based workshops within in-person and virtual environments. While the creative music making was not intended as, and is not considered to be, therapy, for some young people it forms one part of their complex journey to recovery.
Our partners
- The Maudsley and Bethlem Hospital School, including the Snowsfield Adolescent Unit, Intensive Treatment Programme, Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit, Acorn Lodge and Bethlem Adolescent Unit, and Enhanced Treatment Service
- Lavender Walk Adolescent Unit
- The Pilgrim Pathways School including the Croft Centre and Darwin Centre in Cambridge
- Springfields School
- London East Alternative Provision
In this Moment (2022)
Exhibited at the Bethlem Gallery and the Museum of the Mind, In this Moment was an immersive sensory exhibition, created by sound artist Gawain Hewitt and young people at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School. It featured three sound sculptures produced by Gawain containing work created in project sessions with young people and CLS musicians. The sculptures invite audiences to interact with them and play different sounds and tracks. The installations have appeared at CLS concerts and Tate Modern, and featured in other exhibitions and events. View more images of the sculptures here.
In This Moment also brought Sound Young Minds to the attention of The Lancet Pyschiatry, which published a feature about the project.
Sound Walk
Created by Jackie Walduck, Sound Walk included project pieces that were geolocated into Lavender Walk’s hospital garden and triggered when listeners physically walked ‘inside’ them using their phones.
Scoring Mental Health
Kings College and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) commissioned Gawain Hewitt, with support from CLS musician Matt Maguire, to work with people living with mental illnesses to create a piece of music depicting their illness, Scoring Mental Health. This culminated in a BBC Radio 3 documentary and performances at the IoPPN and Museum of the Mind along with panel discussions about the work, that also included our Director of Participation, Fiona Lambert.
The next generation of music leaders
We also work with Fellows from the Royal Academy of Music Open Academy and with young leaders from RAW Materials Brixton, to ensure that the next generation of music leaders are skilled in working in this way.
How we work
Learn more about our practice and how this project has been developed in this blog post from workshop leader Gawain Hewitt.
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