Room to Room Music – creating bespoke moments of music with care-home residents

For many years CLS has had a history of working in health settings. We were one of the first chamber orchestras, over 30 years ago, to work in partnership with children’s hospitals and to invest in music and creative health. Room to Room Music has evolved from this work, standing on the shoulders of partnerships and practice that has been consolidated and strengthened over time, most notably L’Chaim, an annual tour of string quartet concerts that took place around cups of tea and conversation in the social spaces of Jewish Care’s residential care homes from 2010.  

In 2018, we asked Jewish Care if there were ways that we could be more useful and if we could make a greater impact when we visited their homes. They told us about the residents who couldn’t leave their rooms. The ones who were isolated and unable to take part in any activities. The ones who were most vulnerable. And so, Room to Room Music was created. 

Building on Jewish Care’s ‘person-centred’ approach, Room to Room Music allows residents to invite pairs of CLS musicians into their rooms to create bespoke moments of music together. As many residents are non-verbal, musicians will take their musical cues from reading the room before starting to improvise music together, responding to the resident’s physical cues as small as eye or finger movements to singing or chat, creating a moment of shared connection through music making.  

The drive of this work is not about our musicians playing music TO people, it’s about making music WITH people and creating a shared, intimate personal experience together that’s empowering, unique and we hope, brings moments of light and joy. And I can’t stress enough that this really is about the shared experience – not only does this way of working have an impact on the people involved in the project, but also on our musicians. It stretches them as individual artists and pushes them to find real engagement and connection with people and each other. It can feel challenging. It can feel risky – but also exhilarating. 

This way of working has now evolved across all of CLS’ participation work. Making improvised music alongside participants who our musicians meet ‘in-the-moment’ appears in various guises across all our health and wellbeing projects including children’s hospitals, hospices, social prescribing programmes and in psychiatric hospital schools. It’s a practice that’s at the root of all our community projects and now the foundation to how we’re starting to create new work – most recently our new touring show for babies and young children, The Wonderland Garden, which was devised through improvisation and is also a main feature of the performance allowing musicians to connect and respond directly with its very young audience.  

It’s extraordinary that something that started behind closed doors as small, bespoke, improvised moments of musical connection with vulnerable people is now driving how our musicians are creating music, making work, and connecting with our audiences. And it’s something they’re exploring and experimenting with more and more both off and on the stage. But more about that another time… 

Fiona Lambert, Director of Participation & Deputy CEO