Since 1999, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields has been delivering projects to empower people who are or who have been homeless through music-making. Working with day centres and frontline homelessness organisations including The Connections at St Martin’s, our musicians work alongside participants to create and perform new pieces of music.
Read V’s Music-Making Journey below and discover the power of this work:
V has been attending The Connection at St Martins for 1 year, and got involved with music sessions as soon as she started, through The Connection’s resident music therapist. Soon after, she joined the ASMF’s music sessions, and the first session had a great impact on her. Being given an instrument made V want to delve in more, finding different sounds and playing her part in creating different pieces and styles.
“I lost my sister not long ago. Getting involved in the music sessions helped me not think about that – instead I was able to think about all the other things I have in my life. The sessions keep me feeling hopeful for learning new things, and helps me remain optimistic and want to move forward rather than looking back and thinking about the sad things in the past.”
When V first started coming to the sessions she played a tuned percussion which became nicknamed “the V”. From there, she moved to xylophone – the sound, she feels, is much better as she can use it to contribute to the songs. For V, learning how to get involved was really straight forward: everybody plays music together and you learn by following others and matching what they’re doing. Then, when you’ve got it, you can start experimenting and finding what you’d like to play.
V thinks that the atmosphere of the music sessions and the friendliness of the musicians is important in her getting involved. It’s different, she says, from her childhood learning where you take instructions from the teachers and professionals: “We’re given lots of help initially, but from there we can develop our own ideas.”
Over time, V felt more confident, and before long she was helping other people to learn pieces and introducing them to what to do when they were new to the group, with everyone encouraging each other and working as a team. Having her instrument to get better at week-in week-out was really helpful in building her confidence.
“For me in particular, giving me the chance to play with professional musicians motivates me a lot to want to come here every Monday, to learn more – every time I come I’m advancing more and more. When the music is going on it makes me want to participate, get involved and keep getting better, which I don’t have elsewhere.”
Teamwork is a crucial part of the sessions. There’s no ‘them and us’ or formal structures – we work as a team and help each other, which helps everything go so well. The freedom participants have in the music sessions to create parts and build pieces together helps V think about how to fit in with other people and support them with what they’re doing.
“My ambition is to start working again soon, and the music sessions are helping me to realise I’m not own my own. Taking part in the group is helping me learn to communicate with other people and know that people are there for you. They show me that we’re all together, I’m not alone, and that will be helpful if I go to work again.”
Music was always been a part of V’s life, at secondary school and in Church, and since coming to the music sessions it’s found a new place:
“I now compose my own music! One day during Christmas I was feeling a bit down because my parents aren’t around. I was thinking about my family and decided to create a song to help myself through that moment. I thought about all my family and created music and words about my Dad, my Mum, my Auntie but I brought them together through song. My Auntie always used to say to me: ‘where’s your husband?’, so I made sure I got that in there and now when I think of the song I think ‘oh auntie you are still the same.’ Doing that lifted me up when I was feeling down, and we’ll hopefully work on that piece in a music session soon.
There was also an old Italian tune called Santa Lucia – I made my own version of that around Christmas time too, and put a positive story on it. My version’s called Beneath the Silver Moon.”
V hopes to keep making music with ASMF, and has ambitions to learn more instruments and about other musical elements. Working towards projects like recordings and performances gives her motivation and encouragement to work hard towards something – harder than she would on her own – in an effort in to impress the audience.
“Music enhances your ability to do more things. It calms you down. I used to listen to Jim Reeves music, and that’s all about telling you a story of something – it makes you feel relaxed, it’s really helpful in places like The Connection which can sometimes feel chaotic. Taking part in the music sessions makes me feel calmer and more ready to face the problems outside.”