About Mindsong
Mindsong creates and provides services across Gloucestershire that are tailored for people living with dementia and their family and friends, helping to support wellbeing, decrease isolation, develop new relationships, and bring joy through music. We offer clinical music therapy sessions, community singing groups and volunteer-led singing with residents in care homes. We also aim to increase awareness and understanding of dementia through training and education.
The openness of our approach has enabled us to use the skills and experience gained within our dementia work to support people with other health conditions. We currently deliver supportive singing groups to improve breathing and quality of life for people with respiratory conditions, Long Covid and aphasia.
Whoever we are working with, meaningful music-making and singing lies at the heart of what we do. All our work springs from a music therapy ethos of always seeing the strengths, abilities and potential in everybody we encounter. Our approach is based on ever-evolving knowledge and research about the potential for music to be used as a powerful tool in healthcare.
Hundreds of volunteers use their skills to work with us, alongside an employed staff team, a board of trustees and a bank of freelance music therapists and vocal leaders. The spectrum of services we offer, along with our fluid, connected, personalised approach at all levels of the organisation, makes Mindsong unique.
In an uncertain world, we aim to provide a supportive presence for the people we work with, always listening with open ears and offering comfort, companionship and, of course, music.
Charity Number: 1177043
Meet The Team
We continue our carefully managed growth, we make our own rules wherever possible and look for the best way to tackle any challenge. Job vacancies do come up…you might want to join us.
Not everyone who is on the team is below, but main staff members are and our lovely board of trustees.
My first experience with dementia was in my teens, a family visit to my grandmother in hospital one Christmas. She wasn’t able to recognize us, but as we sang carols, to my amazement I saw her lips moving and forming the words. I knew that many others had had similar experiences and when I heard that music therapists were working with dementia I knew it was something that the Three Choirs Festival should be doing.
To observe or assist a music therapist with a session is at the same time humbling and empowering. One sees that there is much more to those with dementia; they are real people who may still respond to music even when they cannot hold any conversation. It is my intention that Mindsong will be there for you if you need it, and for me too, as we help improve the quality of life for people with dementia and their carers, through music.