A ground breaking collaborative project, supported by Help Musicians, sharing stories of children, family, staff and musicians' experiences of health, music and hospitalisation through music and spoken word. The 1000 Days Project provides spaces for people to consider how stories of health and hospital experience can be told creatively, and reaches out across music, health and education communities.
About 1000 Days Project
" A form of creative witnessing, using music to express the feelings and emotions created through musical interaction, in responsive, artistic collaboration" - Mark Fisher, Co Director of Songbirds Music
In 2018, musicians Ros and Mark collaborated with Keisha to develop a series of poems set to music which told the stories of people’s experiences of a hospital music-making programme in a children’s rehabilitation ward. The poems collectively formed a piece of creative evaluation undertaken as part of an award-winning project, Songbirds, at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. The trio’s initial project resulted in Keisha recording 10 poems telling the stories of children, family and staff interactions with the musicians in hospital spaces, 6 of which the musicians added music to. In 2019 Ros received support from Help Musicians to develop a series of workshops sharing learning from this creative collaboration with music, health and educational communities.
Through music, video and sound 1000 Days shares experiences of music-making in hospital settings and examines how the artists developed their collaboration. It explores how creative collaborations can offer new approaches to reflective evaluation, which in turn enable dissemination to wider audiences. It also questions how this approach supports patient’s voices and experiences to be included more centrally within evaluation methodologies.
Participants will go away with a more informed understanding of music and health practice and of the role music creation can play in creative evaluation.
No prior experience of working in a healthcare setting is needed to participate!
“I spent 6 months on a hospital ward when I was 10 years old with Leukaemia. Thankfully, I have been in remission for 15 years now with no other major health concerns! I would have loved to have experience something like what you guys are doing when I was in hospital.”