Jon Hall was able to showcase the fruits of a unique one-off four day music project at the Music Therapy Advances in Neuro-disability Conference in June 2015. The music therapy project was a partnership between the charities Headway and Nordoff -Robbins. Clients were taught to play instruments, sing together as a group, perform and narrate their own personal recovery stories. All vocals, instruments and sounds were created and performed by the group and two supporting music therapists. The project lead to a re-recorded cover version of ‘All you need is love’ by the Beatles, and a DVD which was shown at an event at Abbey Rd studios to celebrate the achievement of a group of people with brain injury.
In this work Jon drew on his combined skills as a record producer and music therapist to give participants an experience of being in a band, making a record and a DVD to watch together.
This innovative music project combined different platforms, linking together music therapy, studio style recording and video production and promotional concepts more typical in the music industry than the therapeutic world. Through this fusion participants are afforded a ‘musical mirror’ through which they could observe their well-functioning selves, and being in social and cultural connection to the wider world. Theoretically this work aligns with the recent psycho-socio-cultural perspectives of Community Music Therapy and ‘music and health’ programmes for recovery in various clinical areas.
A short film of this work can be found below.