So Many Beauties has won the Manchester Culture Award for Excellence in Creative Health and Wellbeing!
This is a powerful recognition of the incredible creative talent of the people living with dementia who shaped our Festival at The Bridgewater Hall.
Huge thanks to the Bridgewater Hall team for the nomination and to the 30+ partner organisations who collaborated with us.
But above all—congratulations to every person living with dementia whose creativity brought the festival to life.
The highly acclaimed So Many Beauties Intercultural Collective will be performing at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester at 12:45pm on Friday 19 September. This dementia friendly performance featuring new music written with local elders will be followed by a singing for wellbeing workshop led by Shared Harmonies. The event takes place in the ground floor foyer and is free to attend. Please note that the event is unticketed so audience seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. If you are interested in bringing a small group of elders please contact hollymarlandmusic@gmail.com as we may be able to reserve seats.
Further information about the event is included on the document below;
We’re delighted to have launched our new So Many Beauties project with a joyful and packed out event at the Bridgewater Hall. Generously supported by Arts Council England we’ll be spending the next 12 months working with people living with dementia and our brilliant partner organisations to create a new culturally diverse dementia-friendly music festival which will take place in September 2024.
Our launch featured the world premiere of new music written with the fabulous members of Age UK Salford’s Buddy Club, a dementia support service. We’ll be sharing more stories about the launch and the unfolding project so watch this space!
We are delighted to have been awarded a grant from Arts Council England National Lottery for an 18 month project to develop a culturally diverse, dementia friendly music festival which will take place in 2024. We will collaborate with Greater Manchester stakeholders, people living with dementia and their carers to design the event and write brand new music which will be performed on the day.
You can view our current projects page for more information or for a first hand experience come along to our project launch at the Bridgewater Hall on Friday 22 September 2023. This event will run from 12pm – 3.15pm and is free to attend.
This event is part of the #takingittothestreets campaign by @ReimaginingDementia. #shatteringthesilence
Find out more about the Reimagining Dementia Coalition campaign here.
You can view our current projects page for more information or for a first-hand experience come along to our project launch at the Bridgewater Hall on Friday 22 September 2023.
We have been awarded further funding from Arts Council England to deliver a new project around creating more diverse music that engages with people from different ethnic backgrounds. We have selected a wonderful artistic team to work with and we are now creating some exciting new music together.
Please follow the website for updates about this project.
Last year on the 26th September we had our utterly incredible dementia friendly music festival at the Bridgewater Hall – the first of its kind in Manchester – bringing together many organisations, musicians and groups of people who had either engaged in the So Many Beauties project or simply wanted a fun musical day out. We had over 450 people across the day with different activities and performances on offer – all scheduled to be dementia friendly and stewarded by students from the RNCM and Bridgewater Hall staff.
You can relive some of the highlights in the short film we made below …enjoy!
A small smorgasbord of audience feedback
Why isn’t every musical event like this? Being free to participate in any way you like. The energy in the room was amazing!
We have had an amazing time. My mum cannot speak (garbled speech) but can sing clearly. She has blossomed as the day has gone on as she feels part of what is happening around her.
Everyone so surprisingly friendly, kind and helpful. Performances absolutely lovely. Had a tear in my eye more than once (nearly spoilt my usual macho image!)
What a joyous afternoon! Thanks to all involved. I (as a carer) had a great time as did the couple I was supporting.
Come and celebrate the connecting power of music at our dementia friendly music festival in Manchester on Thursday 26 September as part of BBC Music Day!
Book tickets at www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk
There has been a significant upsurge in publications and initiatives focussing on music and dementia in the last few weeks. A new national programme funded by The Utley Foundation – Music for Dementia was announced earlier this month. This will be given a significant boost through BBC Music Day taking place on 26th September this year. The BBC will join the campaign to ensure that there is music available to everyone living with dementia by 2020.
Orchestras Live published their report on orchestral activity involving older people, including people living with dementia last Friday;
Creative and Innovative Approaches to involving older people with Orchestras
Baring Foundation also released a Treasury of Arts Activities which offers 50 different arts based activities that could be used when working creatively with people living with dementia as well as some general pointers for people interested in working in this way.
I’m hoping that this increasing interest will stimulate collaborative co-creative thinking around the provision of music in the care of people living with dementia. There’s always the possibility that more and more toolkits and publications will be produced by organisations and that people living with dementia and those who care for them will be confronted by an information jungle with no guidance on know where to turn.
Diversity of provision is essential but access to provision needs to be streamlined and simplified. It’s also essential that people living with dementia and their immediate carers have a strong voice in the emerging discussions.
The So Many Beauties (SMB) approach is to work co-creatively with people living with dementia. Between now and September, I will be having creative conversations (verbal and musical) with the wonderful people I work alongside through SMB. Together we will explore what Music for Dementia 2020 means to them, what they want, what empowers them the most. Who knows where these exciting discussions will lead? Let’s throw ideas into the air and see where they land!
(Working “in character” with Marianne Clarac, music for health expert and clown doctor at MRI Hospital in Manchester)
Exciting news! I am looking for musicians from the voluntary/amateur music making community to take part in the next phase of the So Many Beauties project! If you are interested in learning how to create new music, poems and songs or simply sharing your own musical talents with people living with dementia, this project might be just the project for you!
Have a look at the information below to see if this is something you might like to be part of. The project carries on in 2019 so if you’re not available before Christmas you can still register your interest.
You can now view online the programme proof for April’s concert which details the project, participant settings and performers so should give you a good idea of what was involved in the creation of this lovely new choral work!
creative music making with diverse communities 