Paul and Nick Harvey Fund
We have now distributed a total of £610,599 to grantees of the Paul & Nick Harvey Fund. A first round of grants, made in May 2020, went to 27 organisations who each received a share of £500,000, donated by The Hunter Foundation.
In August, we partnered with the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) who provided £100,000 which, together with donations from the public, enabled us to fund a further four organisations offering musical services for people living with dementia and their carers.
Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who applied (we are sorry we couldn’t support you all) and to our supporters who spread the word about this fund.
Our huge appreciation, too, to the wonderful Paul & Nick Harvey for Four Notes – Paul’s Tune, where the story began.
We’ll be following progress of each of the projects and bring you updates in the coming months.
Click on each organisation to find out more about them and how they plan to spend their grant.
Grantees
Age UK Croydon
The Music for Dementia funding will enable us to develop the musical side of our current Memory Tree Café and reach a wider audience through the medium of music. We will devote one of our weekly cafés to a monthly musical café with different genres of music that reflect the diversity and culture of our residents in Croydon. We will work with our voluntary sector partners to plan a musical programme of activity to extend the reach and increase accessibility for anyone living with dementia and their carers. We will be able to offer an uplifting and joyful experience to participants that can only have a positive impact on their mental and physical health and wellbeing.
Agewell CIC
Agewell works with adult over 50 in the community to offer services and support to help people fulfil their purpose, achieve their aspirations and live well in later life.
This funding will support the delivery of two six-week online singing programmes alongside two six-week engage and create programmes. It will also match 30 people with dementia, living at home, with trained Dementia Support Volunteers who can help them create personalised playlists to support them at home.
This funding will also help Agewell engage with their local community and diversify their musical options, to reflect more musical genres.
City of London Sinfonia
City of London Sinfonia is a professional orchestra, aiming for their musicians to be at the forefront and to engage with people from all backgrounds in shared moments of connection wherever we meet them – in healthcare, wellbeing and social care settings, or in a concert.
This funding will support the Room to Room project, focusing on creating a shared experience between care home residents, often living with advanced dementias, and CLS musicians. The sessions take place in shared spaces and in individual rooms for residents who are not able to visit communal lounges. These room-to-room visits have proved to have the greatest impact, with musicians working holistically with residents to improvise music inspired by the resident’s movements, speech or levels of engagement, as well as responding to requests and engaging the residents in conversation.
Doncaster Community Arts (darts)
darts’ mission is to create art with people in Doncaster to improve life, learning and health. All of our delivery helps build connections and reduce loneliness. We offer a safe space to try different, often transformative creative activities.
This grant will allow darts to respond to the needs they identified during COVID; using the funding to buy equipment CD/DVD players and then record CDs and DVDs that include music and singing. The resources will set small musical challenges that musicians will collate during visits and then use to create a collaborative piece to be shared.
They hope to also use some of the grant to support a small segment on a local radio show, where people can talk openly about dementia and the support available.
Elder’s Voice
Elders Voice’s mission is to support vulnerable older people, in the London Borough of Brent, with a range of practical support and activities to increase social inclusion, reduce loneliness and help people maintain independent living in their own homes.
This funding will support the formalisation of the music and dementia work, creating a set of genre specific music courses for people with dementia. This grant will support the running of 6 courses with a professional musician facilitating each course. Those courses will then be edited into a set of online resources that can be accessed for free by individuals and organisations, on demand.
Equal Arts
Equal Arts delivers creative ageing programmes across the North East. This funding will support an online choir across Sunderland, Gateshead and Newcastle care settings, for a year.
The grant will also provide weekly online creative sessions and the opportunity to work with Norther Sinfonia Chorus on a digital song writing project. The project will work with professional musicians and use an online audio platform to connect local settings before bringing them all together.
Forget Me Notes SCIO
Forget Me Notes Project is an Edinburgh-based charity that uses music to build community, combat social isolation and aid self-expression. Through singing together we help people with dementia and others to explore memories and emotions and make connections with the aim of making them feel valued, heard and supported.
The generous funding from the Paul & Nick Harvey Fund will enable us to run our choir, re-start Music Memory sessions in care homes and community settings, and run a new series of lunchtime concerts, in conjunction with Capital Theatres, which will celebrate people's own playlists.
Forget-me-not Chorus
FMNC gives a powerful, creative voice to its members but is not just about bringing back memories by singing old songs. We sing a huge variety of repertoire, setting the musical bar high and defying the condition. We collaborate with a variety of professional artists (composers, performers and writers) to create new, original works which stimulate an enormous sense of pride and self-worth in our choristers who have a means of sharing their stories with a wider community.
Recognising the value of online delivery during COVID, this funding will support the choir to continue its online delivery and support more people living with dementia. Using this grant, we will continue to develop our virtual activities beyond the pandemic, informed by recent experience and participant feedback, expanding the flexibility of our delivery to best serve the needs of our FMNC community.
Golden Oldies
Goldies Cymru (part of the Golden-Oldies Charity) provides fun social daytime Sing and Smile sessions for older vulnerable people, including those with dementia and their carers, across South and West Wales.
Funding from the Paul and Nick Harvey Fund will support two areas of our charity’s development during 2021. Firstly, it will support us to continue providing our popular Goldies Live online singing activities during social distancing restrictions, with a particular focus on movement to music, Dementia Friendly sessions, Welsh Language sessions, the inclusion of Bollywood music/dance and reaching out to new audiences across Wales. Secondly, once safe to provide, the funding will support the relaunch of all our Goldies Cymru Sing and Smiles groups across communities in South and West Wales.
Heads Together Productions
Heads Together is working in partnership with Seacroft Friends and Neighbours in their local community, to support people with dementia with singing groups and support resources. This funding will specifically support an expansion of the Open Voices singing format, including 6 outdoor music improvisation sessions for people with dementia, followed by weekly singing sessions. These sessions would have a greater focus on singing and music making and elements of oral history, storytelling.
Herts Musical Memories
Herts Musical Memories believes that all people with memory problems or dementia should still enjoy positive fulfilling experiences that enhance their lives and improves their health and wellbeing. The organisation delivers singing choirs for people with dementia, and this funding will support the continuation of this choir service while it remains online.
This grant will also help the choirs to offer more culturally diverse music, welcoming more people with dementia from the local community.
Intergenerational Music Making
IMM is working to advance wellbeing and social cohesion through musical creativity. Our mission is to bring people together across generations through music, reducing loneliness and isolation and improving the mental health and wellbeing, particularly for those living with dementia.
Through this fund, IMM will be working on two projects. The first project supported by this fund will be implementing an IMM Music Therapist Dementia role at Frimley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust for the duration of a year. This role will help transform Dementia Care at Frimley Hospital, contributing to their larger aims of becoming a centre of excellence in dementia care. With support from this fund we will be able to showcase music as having a fundamental role to play in healthcare transformation particularly for those on hospitals wards.
The second project supported by this fund will be a dementia focused song writing project in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland inclusive of song writing workshops, training days, a celebratory event followed by the production of an album. The aim of this project is to celebrate people living/caring for those with dementia and their stories, to provide agency to the complex feelings and experiences surrounding dementia and the impact Covid-19 has had on them. The artistic starting point for this project shall be themed around hope, friendship, prosperity all bound together through personal story telling and song writing. This project will give their stories a legacy, one that can be passed down for generations.
The workshops will create 5 original songs that will contribute to a larger UK wide celebratory album. This album will be co-produced and will amplify the voices of those living/caring with dementia across all nations (NI, Scotland, Wales and England) whilst raising awareness and championing the vision and value of music in dementia care.
Kirrie Connections
Kirrie Connections operate from a community hub in the middle of Kirriemuir, and from there offer a variety of social support to both people living with dementia and their unpaid family carers. Everything we do comes from a strengths-based, person-centred approach, and the need and wants of our members.
We will use the funding from the Paul and Nick Harvey fund to support the Kirrie Connection’s choir for year, covering the professional costs of our choir leader and also to support new members to get online with digital devices. This would allow us to continue to support our existing members, welcome and support new members, and give us enough breathing room to build a new sustainability plan for the choir.
Lifesize CIC
Lifesize is a small organisation based in East Sussex, delivering live music for people with dementia in care settings. This funding will support the sustained weekly delivery of music in 5 locations, including hospital and residential care settings. Through this funding, they are able to bring a new trainee musician on board to support this extended delivery and offer music for more people with dementia.
It will also help to deliver professional development sessions for care staff in those settings, to support them to continue engaging with music in between visits from Lifesize.
Link Age Southwark
Link Age Southwark is a local volunteering charity that supports older people to thrive in later life. Our mission is to help older people stay connected with their communities by alleviating loneliness, improving health and wellbeing and making communities stronger through volunteering.
This funding will support a year of the musical memories singing group, offering musical activities with a professional musician leading the group.
Manchester Camerata
We’re so grateful and excited to have received funding from the Paul and Nick Harvey Fund. Half of the grant will be going towards Dementia Memory Cafes where we will work with a composer and our orchestral musicians to deliver a music making programme for a group of people living with dementia, living at home with a carer. These sessions give people living with dementia more confidence in themselves and their ability, enable them to better communicate and feel better connected with their carer and also encourage them to be more creative in their day to day lives.
The other half of the grant will be used to develop our Music in Mind: Remote programme to cater to at home carers, consisting of an online resource and 121 training and support sessions with our music therapists and trained orchestral musicians. This will enable the carers to feel more confident to try new dementia-friendly activities at home, feel supported in making music at home with the person for whom they are caring, and feel that they can are better connected or can better communicate with their loved one.
Music for Wellbeing CIC
Music for Wellbeing are so excited to receive this funding. It will enable us to continue our dementia-focused work in Wiltshire, supporting creativity, access to music and social opportunities for people living with dementia in more rural areas. We are looking forward to creating music with people with dementia and those who support them, increasing wellbeing and develop volunteering opportunities for people interested in this kind of work. We can’t wait to start working with our local partner organisations on the project. A huge thanks to the Paul and Nick Harvey Fund for this opportunity.
Musical Memories Choir
Musical Memories Choir is choir with a purpose! Started in 2014, we were born out of a wish to enable people living with dementia and carers, to come together and experience both the many benefits of singing and the friendship of others living through similar experiences.
This funding will support the choir to continue while sessions are online, and then to help deliver 40 additional in-person choir sessions. The support from this grant would also create a DVD, CD and Songbook of the choir’s favourite song for everyone to enjoy.
Northern Ireland Music Therapy
Northern Ireland Music Therapy wish to see every child, young person and adult in Northern Ireland receive the level of music therapy service that meets their needs. We are currently the only music therapy organisation in Northern Ireland.
Through this funding, they will be able to deliver 10 weeks of additional music therapy service, in 5 settings for people living with dementia. Each care setting will benefit from 3 hours of music therapy a week, for 10 weeks, and be given a resource pack at the end of this block so they can continue to include music in care.
Playlist for Life
Playlist for Life promotes the use of personal playlists for dementia. Our mission is to achieve widespread understanding of the value of personally meaningful music for those living with dementia through powerful advocacy and practical advice. We want everyone living with dementia to have a personal playlist and everyone who loves or cares for them to know how to use it.
This funding will support the extension of the playlist support hubs into more rural communities in Scotland. This grant will support the creation of new music hubs in these communities, by partnering with community organisations that already have a strong foothold in their local community and provide them with free training and materials so they can set up Help Points where people with dementia can receive a helping hand to create their playlist. We provide every Help Point with a box of getting-started materials and activities that they can offer to their service users.
Richmond Music Trust
Richmond Music Trust provides instrumental and singing tuition, weekly orchestras, ensembles and bands for all abilities, as well as regular concerts and large-scale events which include hundreds of children in collaborative music-making.
This funding will create two new community groups for older people, with the aim of offering musical enjoyment and support for people living with dementia. The two groups will offer higher and lower levels of support, depending on the needs of the people with dementia attending. Musical engagement will be through era specific music and supporting lyrics.
Shared Harmonies
Shared Harmonies CIC specialises in delivering community singing and music projects working with people affected by health or wellbeing conditions including cancer, poor metal health, living with dementia, Parkinson’s or respiratory conditions such as COPD.
This grant funding will allow Shared Harmonies to increase diversity in their musical work by identifying how current provision could be adapted to be more inclusive of culturally diverse music. This grant will also help identify more diverse singing facilitators and co-produce a best practice guide for other organisations working in the sector.
Songtime CIC
Songtime leads regular Music and Memories singing groups for people living with dementia in their community. During COVID these sessions were moved to online, so people could continue to access the singing groups as well as conversation and companionship from the group.
This funding will support these sessions to remain a regular, weekly, group either online or face-to-face.
Spitz Charitable Trust
Content coming soon
Together Dementia Support
Together Dementia Support will be able to continue running the Together In song Gospel Choir that has been so popular for the last 4 years. The grant will enable us to run monthly singing sessions and to take the choir out to perform at community events, entertaining people and showing what people living with dementia can still do. This group is open to all but draws on the gospel singing tradition of the African and Caribbean people. Many members attend with a relative and all enjoy the singing, laughter and reminiscence.’
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Orchestra is Northern Ireland’s only full-time symphony orchestra. With a mission to enrich the lives of people living in NI, those visiting, and those who encounter it through international touring and regular broadcasts, the Orchestra strives for excellence in all it undertakes, be it performances, learning and community engagement or creative collaborations.
This funding will support the development of accessible content and performances for people with dementia in Northern Ireland. Musical content will also be recorded and offered as video and audio recordings to increase the number of people able to access the resources.
Wishing Well for Health CIC
Wishing Well Music for Health brings live, participatory music-making right to the heart of healthcare. We believe that Hospitals should be included in the cultural landscape that surrounds them for the benefit of the whole hospital community. This funding will support the delivery of weekly bedside music programmes for people with dementia in a local hospital setting. This funding will support this work to maintain a blended delivery – online and in person – to ensure the work is accessible.