Grace Meadows and Douglas Noble write:
“It’s been a few months since the first Musical Care Taskforce convened (where has this year gone?!) and we wanted to give you a quick update on the progress made and our plans for the future.
As you will recall, this exciting musical care movement brings together like minded people from all parts of the UK to share ideas, join forces and help share one message – people living with dementia need access to music as part of their daily care and we need to act now to make that a reality for everyone living with dementia!
In terms of structure, the Taskforce’s activity will be driven by a small core working group of partners to the Utley Foundation and Live Music Now, who will regularly call upon people living with dementia and the wider Taskforce to offer advice and input. We are delighted to announce that the core group now includes the National Care Forum, the Care Quality Commission, Association of British Orchestras, and Playlist for Life. This will really help embed the full variety of music provision into the care sector.
We are very grateful for the wider Taskforce’s input to date. We have been busily working through all of your brilliant ideas, questions and observations that came out of the July workshop.
As a result of these suggestions, we are working on a 2020 Action Plan and starting early in the year, we will share:
• A Terms of Reference for the Taskforce;
• Save the dates for future Musical Care Advisory and Support Group workshops planned for spring, summer and winter 2020; and
• The Musical Care Pledge
Further down the line, across the year, we will work towards creating:
• Toolkits for carers and musicians working with people living with dementia;
• Key Messages – so that we can be aligned in our promotion of music in dementia care; and
• Guidance to support the Care Quality Commission and the Adult Social Care Sector in linking music provision to the quality of care, and on developing practice in relations to delivering music with people living with dementia.
With your help and support with the above we can make the musical provision for care professionals even stronger!
Sharing the message
A big shout out must go to the wonderful BBC Music Day Team for helping raise the profile of music and dementia by offering extensive coverage to all the exceptional music and dementia organisations, of which many of you are part of, across the BBC networks on BBC Music Day in September 2019.
The BBC Team released their latest version of BBC Music Memories a ground-breaking website that stimulates memory through music, designed especially for people living with dementia using the extensive BBC archives. Live Music Now helped set up and took part in the feature on the One Show with Nile Rogers. Music for Dementia 2020 launched a Musical Map for Dementia. This map highlights dementia-friendly musical events and services across the UK and Playlists for Life as well as advising the BBC on their Music Memories website, held many Musical Teas in communities nationwide. We could go on, but the level of activity from many of our Musical Care Taskforce members was breath taking and you should be very proud.
Subsequently, LMN & M4D2020 presented at the National Care Forum Annual Managers Meeting on 4th November and attended the Music Care Conference at Nottingham University on the same date helping raise the profile of our musical care movement.
The Music for Dementia 2020 campaign has had a truly fantastic year with the launch of our website, musical map and playlist campaign and we couldn’t have achieved this without your support.
We’d like to close by sending you all our warmest wishes for a happy festive season and we look forward to working with you over the next year to give the gift of music for all those living and caring for those with dementia!”
