Current Projects

So Many Beauties fills the Bridgewater Hall Manchester with music and creativity

Friday 20 September 2024

Film artist Geoff Brokate has worked with us again to capture some of the magic of our latest festival event which was co-created with elders and partner organisations from across many different communities in Greater Manchester.

The project aims were to

• reduce the social isolation of vulnerable people living with dementia by involving them in an 18 month programme of co-creation, culminating in the delivery + evaluation of a large scale dementia friendly music festival 
• increase representation in music for dementia groups by supporting the skills development of ethnically diverse musicians 
• improve people living with dementia’s access to cultural opportunities by mapping out music and dementia provision in Greater Manchester 

We chose to use a raft of creative methods of evaluating the project which included Geoff’s film. We also commissioned a sound collage of audience responses which were collected by music students from the Royal Northern College of Music who received training from project lead Holly and sound artist Caro C who then curated this wonderful piece.

These wonderful photos taken by Chris Payne are also a powerful visual reminder of what happened at the festival and the many different communities involved.

Here’s the full programme so you can see what we got up to;

And finally a written evaluation report on how successfully the project met its aims with future recommendations;