Participatory work is the heart of CLS, where music and music-making happens in communities and live performance is created with people, for a shared experience that’s empowering and unique – and, we hope, brings moments of joy.
Working within the community
For over 35 years we have been sharing and creating music with people outside of our performance venues. We were one of the first orchestras to work with young people in children’s hospitals and over time we have broadened our work in health and wellbeing to include care homes as part of our Room to Room Music project where we create bespoke pieces of music with residents in isolation, as well as hospices, with survivors of brain injuries, with families, older people and in GP surgeries as part of social prescribing programmes.
In 2020, we won the Royal Philharmonic Society Impact Award for Sound Young Minds, our music making project where we work with young people who are patients at psychiatric hospital schools.
Other projects in our programme
Social prescribing – Music and Wellbeing
Promoting wellbeing through weekly creative sessions
‘Everyone feels better afterwards. That is the power of music.’
– Headway member
‘Gawain [sound artist] varies the pace and the feel of each session but always takes his cue from the members. It made for huge variety of music making over these three days. I felt challenged and deeply fulfilled as a musician.’
– CLS Musician
What [the musicians] can do in a short space of time for our pupils is great. They are bringing something to our school that you can’t get anywhere else.
– Teacher, Evelina Children’s Hospital School
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