More than a musical success

On Thursday Age UK’s North Leigh Singing for Fun group performed a wonderful concert of summer music in Warneford Hospital Chapel. The concert was about forty minutes long and consisted of Irish songs, church music, African songs and finished off with jazz and spirituals.

The aims of the concert were:

• To give the Age UK group the opportunity to sing in a beautiful setting with a beautiful acoustic
• To challenge the Age UK group to perform to help improve the group sound: performance helps to sharpen the focus.
• To give in-patients an opportunity to engage with live music
• To challenge stigma around mental health

I am so proud of the Age UK group because to start with it was a slightly off the wall idea ‘I know everyone, let’s go and sing at the mental health unit!’

For people with little experience of mental health, mental health units can seem disturbing places. There is concern that people will be unpredictable, behave in a disturbing way, even be violent. The reality is that on Thursday, we were pushed to identify the service users from the care staff. Mental health problems affect 1 in 4 people at some point in their lives. At the end of the concert one person (a patient) said ‘I feel like a real person’ showing the importance of normalising mental health environments and keeping in-patients connected and included. Others were moved to tears by the singing, demonstrating the powerful tool music can be.

I am absolutely thrilled that this endeavour went so well. We had a good audience, the singers performed the best they ever had, and the link between hospital and community was strengthened. Someone even suggested we go back at Christmas!

Take Two :: Every Group Is Different

I’ve been working with an organisation in Oxfordshire which works with older adults and adults of working age with a specific disability. I had been working with one group, and I was invited to work with another, being told they were a similar group in terms of age and ability. Great, I thought, I can do what I’ve already done with the existing group.

Big mistake.

The group, whilst similar in age and physical ability, were far less communicative and confident. They were so self-conscious that the format which worked so well for the other group seemed to freeze this group. All my suggestions were met with negativity, and I left feeling very unhappy about my ability to connect with people, and not ever wanting to return. I mentioned to the workers and volunteers how I felt and they were reassuring and were able to get some more specific feedback from the participants.

I was surprised (and a little anxious) when I was asked to go back. The workers said the group enjoyed the session and they gave me a few pointers about what to change. I spent more time at the beginning talking to people – it’s important to overcome shyness in these situations. I scrapped the vocal warm-up, we sat around the tables, instead of clearing a space to make a circle (something of a holy cow), and we used different percussion instruments which we discussed and experimented with. We sang a variety of songs, and I accompanied with both the guitar and the shruti box to provide plenty of cushion to peoples’ voices. After I had understood the deep lack of self-confidence, I was able to tailor the workshop to accommodate people’s need for a sense of security and nurture. The percussion instruments deflect away from the person; sitting around tables instead of in a circle means there is no empty space to fill, and there is a physical barrier; providing accompaniments to songs which would usually be unaccompanied means there is no sense of a ‘naked’ voice.

This time around, the session went really well. Everyone was able to join in, either through percussion or with their voices, or through movement. We created an intimate, trusting atmosphere, as after songs people felt able to reflect on what the song meant to them and in some cases shed tears of emotion.

I am so grateful now I was given a second opportunity to work with this group. Sometimes it just takes a couple of goes to get it right, and a little time to get to know people.

Blowing up markets

Banning sublets

Last week, the State of New York passed a bill that bans short-term rentals: specifically, no homeowner or renter may sublet their home for less than a month. The target is sites like AirBNB, an up and coming website that allows travelers to eschew pricey hotels – and their accompanying hotel room occupancy tax – in favor of private homes.

If the governor chooses to pass the legislation (as opposed to veto it), AirBNB will effectively be outlawed, and with it, a grassroots marketplace economy for short-term accommodation. New York State will have cemented hotels and bed & breakfasts as gatekeepers to the city for travelers who can’t stay with friends or relatives.

To me, this is an interesting reaction: it shows, once again, that established gatekeepers are terrified of the Internet. We’re used to that by now in the context of media content – we already know that newspapers, publishers, record companies and movie distributors aren’t as important as they were – but this is a scarcity-driven marketplace. It used to be that finding a safe, clean room in a strange city was a hard problem, so we turned to hotels as a trusted source. Running a hotel is in itself an expensive, tough business, and as a result there were a limited number in any given city, and the price went up according to demand. Although the hotel business is a ruthless game, it’s always been hotels competing with other hotels.

Now, though, we can visit websites like AirBNB and Couchsurfing, where private citizens can offer their homes to travelers, and the site will let us know who we can trust based on other peoples’ experiences. The marketplace has been blown wide open, and it turns out that a lot of us would rather go for a cheaper, friendlier option. I wouldn’t put money on New York blotting out short sublets for long.

Power to the people

We’re going to be seeing a lot more of this, in all kinds of market sectors. We’re already seeing ridesharing sites become popular, for example, blowing up the market previously owned by taxicabs and making it available to anyone who happens to be driving somewhere. Effectively this formalizes hitchhiking, making it both safer and more efficient.

It all comes down to one simple rule: People want to be free.

The Internet is opinionated: as a medium, it inherently works to empower people and eliminate hierarchies in society. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the most popular Internet companies hail from California; their philosophies are direct descendents of the civil rights activism that took place there in the sixties and seventies. In many cases, it’s even the same people. (Or – and here I put up my hand as the son of Berkeley “radicals” – their children.)

Gatekeepers – companies, structures or processes that act as exclusive barriers or filters – are not long for this world. Where gatekeepers exist, they do so because the alternative was inconvenient at the time when the gatekeeper became established – not because they’re inherently better than an empowered population. Those organizations, companies, and even governments, need to look at themselves very carefully and figure out what needs to be changed, before those things are changed for them.

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Afterwards – Taking Our Leave

Sometimes working independently can be hard. I’ve recently finished a few projects with a number of organisations, and whilst the Occupational Therapists, Dementia Support Workers, Community Psychiatric Nurses etc continue their work with the clients in different contexts, it can sometimes be difficult to know how to properly digest the experience of the project and lay it down, especially when there may have been difficult emotions or situations. I have found that reflecting on the project while it is going helps enormously, not just for notes to look back on week by week, but to read back at the end. This can be particularly helpful when preparing a report. Not every organisation will want a report but it can be a good way of getting down on paper what happened so the project exists within the organisational memory, even if individual workers move on. Sometimes it may be appropriate to write several reports with different slants. I might write one for myself which contains fairly personal stuff about how I felt about my development, where I struggled, what I want to improve on, what I was proud of; another report might be very short and suitable for the organisation’s newsletter; a third might be lengthier, more formal and useful as a shared document from which to learn and develop new projects. Leave-taking can be sad, especially where good relationships have been formed and a group feels comfortable. One participant said on leaving the project ‘I feel quite emotional. You’ve all been so kind and so accepting’. Where there have been difficult relationships or uneasy emotions this too can be hard – from my point of view as a practitioner I will always be asking myself ‘could I have done this better – what could I have done to help this person settle better’ – there is a sense at the end of a project of having missed a chance. Which is why putting it down on the page can help. In The Artists’ Way Julia Cameron suggests a technique called ‘morning pages‘. Stream of consciousness writing I find can help get at the nub of the issue, and be a powerful learning tool for next time.

The product management cycle

Monday: “The plan is A! We’ll market it at A!”

Tuesday: “Actually, I was thinking B. A is stupid. Who would want to do that?”

Wednesday: “Goddamnit, we need to be working towards C. Why does no-one see that?”

Thursday: “Maybe A was right …”

Friday: “This team sucks.”

Hint: pick a direction and run. And make sure – just as your tech team does – that your management team has measurable metrics for success.

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The Summer Is Long…

I’ve reached a point in the year when several projects have come to an end, not to start again until September. So I find myself with a little extra time on my hands. Which is great because I get to do a bit more ‘minstrelsie’ – that is, traveling around the county doing more one-off sessions, and hopefully developing some new work and meeting lots of new lovely people.

Download: Rachel M Smith Singing for Wellbeing Flier (pdf)

Age Concern (Age UK) Singing for Fun and Wellbeing Groups

Age Concern (Age UK) Singing for Fun and Wellbeing Groups are for people aged 50 or older. We meet weekly in term time and all the groups vary depending on who comes along. Many people say to me ‘I can’t sing’ but whether this is true or not, it doesn’t seem to affect their enjoyment of the sessions.

We sing a variety of songs; hymns, songs from shows, popular favourites, folk songs, songs from around the world, gospel, jazz….. We sing unaccompanied; in unison, or in parts. In particular we sing a lot of rounds as they are a fun and straightforward way of getting everyone singing together in harmony. We also sing songs accompanied by the guitar, and sometimes we use percussion instruments. We learn songs by ear, and from song sheets.

All sessions cost £2.50, except for your first session which is free. Sessions will start week commencing Monday 7th June 2010 and run to the end of July 2010.

Banbury, Monday 4pm – 5pm, Age Concern Cafe, White Lion Walk

Witney,Wednesday 10.15am – 11.15am, Lower Hall, Witney Methodist Centre, High Street

North Leigh, Thursday 12.30pm – 1.30pm, North Leigh Youth Centre (at the back of the memorial hall)

Carterton, Friday 4pm – 5pm Brownes Social Club, Brownes Lane (no session Friday 2nd July)

A note on me, Elgg, and social networking projects

Enough people have asked me about this over the last year, that I thought I’d write a little more about why I don’t do social networking work.

Most regular readers will be aware that I co-founded Elgg, the open source social networking framework. If you weren’t, it’s not hard to work out: my last name is Werdmuller von Elgg, and my work centers around the open web. In fact, Elgg is so named because I had bought the domain name elgg.net for my personal email, and didn’t have anything to put there. When Dave Tosh and I conceived of the project, it seemed easier to put it there than anywhere else. (It’s a great domain name: short, memorable and not immediately definable.)

I also co-founded Curverider, the company created to provide commercial Elgg support, which allowed us to build it into the project it is today: an enormously popular social networking platform used by organizations like the WWF and the World Bank.

For various reasons, I chose to leave Elgg and Curverider last year to go freelance and work on some of my own projects. (The last version I was involved with in any way was 1.5 – since then I haven’t been privy to development decisions or involved in the process.) Because of this prior association, however, people still ask me about working on social networking projects all the time – whether that’s a distributed social network, a new platform, or an Elgg-based site.

My answer is always the same: I’d love to, but I can’t.

As you’d expect for a founder, I’m a shareholder in Curverider. As part of this, I am forbidden from competing with the company’s business (which, of course, is social networking – a rapidly growing portion of the entire software market, but that’s a conversation for another time). As a result, I don’t work on social networking platforms, and I’m unable to provide Elgg services, despite it being an open source framework. A process exists for me to obtain an exception for potentially competing products, but this would involve divulging the project and business model, which I don’t believe is an ethical way to treat a consultancy client’s information. So I don’t do it.

Of course, I’m available for web strategy advice, writing opportunities and development services in a range of other areas, including publishing, e-learning and mobile content. I’m also developing a few new ideas that you should see in action soon. As ever, if you’d like my feedback, please feel free to get in touch.

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Intersection: Publishing is today!

Just a quick note that Intersection: Publishing is today:

This afternoon, professionals from the fields off publishing, technology and IP law will gather together to discuss the future of publishing. We’re excited about meeting the attendees, having some interesting conversations and helping to forge productive ongoing collaborations. This is an important time for the industry, and our culture.

We’d love for you to join us. It’s free.

No need to book; just turn up at 1pm. Venue directions are on the website.

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Singing for the Brain Training

On Sunday I attended a training day for people involved with Singing for the Brain. There were facilitators, volunteers, dementia support workers and fundraisers – over 60 in all. Great fun and it was useful to meet other people working in a similar field. Below are some reflections I wrote on the train on the way home…

Reflections

It was exciting to arrive this morning and be greeted by a number of familiar faces. Facilitators who I had met when visiting their sessions, and at the recent meet-up at Old Basing.

Watching Sue Shapland go through the session structure was incredibly useful. As I’m now more familiar with some of the material she uses (I have previously visited the Old Basing group), I was able to focus on some of the subtleties: small gestures such as putting her hand to her ear to indicate she is listening and that it’s our turn to sing – the use of a recorder – for months I have been struggling with a tuning fork to pitch songs – brilliant! The pace of the warm-up was also great – taking time to focus on one sound. Previously I have felt anxious about this aspect: is it too childish? Is everyone bored?

I feel watching the different leaders today gave me permission to go with my instincts more and embrace the session structure as something to be played with. Something I would like to experiment with is the breaking up of the warm-up. Feedback from dementia support workers at one of the Singing for the Brain groups I run suggests that the warm-up goes on for too long, especially when coupled with a lengthy (depending on numbers) welcome song. Perhaps a way around this is to place some of the warm-up activities such as tongue-twisters into the main body of the session? I can however see the arguments for the warm-up section to follow a particular pattern, not least to develop a consistency to the opening of sessions. Evidence based practice anyone?

One of the strengths of today’s training was undoubtedly the variety of the facilitators we saw demonstrating different aspects of a session. I loved the Samba and the Rumba and the Cha-Cha-Cha (which I have temporarily forgotten and hopefully will remember in time for my next group on Tuesday) demonstrated by Joni from Castle Cary. I also enjoyed Faye’s session in which she had, I felt, high expectations of the group. This was a real positive. Singing for the Brain is not just about spoon-feeding, but offering a challenge to people. Finding the balance between nurture and challenge is an important part of the continuing development of Singing for the Brain practice. I really hope to use Faye’s action songs and rounds, as they were straightforward, rewarding and not at all childish. I particularly liked the action song ‘Tony Chestnut‘, and can see that this is something that ticks so many boxes in terms of language, swapping sides when doing the actions, and the actions reminding us of the words.

I think what I will most take away with me is the content of Chreanne’s talk at the beginning, that it isn’t ‘miraculous’ when someone withdrawn due to dementia suddenly ‘wakes up’ and joins in – this is the effect that music has on the brain. She also pointed out that people with a dementia diagnosis do not get ‘a fair crack at neuro-rehabilitation’; this is what Singing for the Brain is, and it shows people with dementia can learn to do new things: learn new songs, new skills and make new friends.