Music on the Children's Unit

I'd like to share one of the other parts of the music programme at HEFT (Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust). Some talented young volunteers came in to the Children's Ward last week, accompanied by their mom Jackie, to perform some music. Their session on the Children's Ward at Heartlands Hospital made a real difference to the day - a hospital stay involves lots of boredom, anxiety and upset, and music is a really good way of helping to create a lovely atmosphere to try to alleviate these.

Parents and staff, as well as patients, sometimes have a difficult time in hospital and it's important for the welfare of all of them to create an environment that's as free of stress as possible. I think the music and arts programme at HEFT is a really important part of making this happen. Thanks so much to Jackie, Ciara and Niamh for coming in.

Here's what Niamh and Ciara said about their visit:

We were lucky enough to be invited in by Christina to visit the Children's Ward at Heartlands Hospital on 20th February 2013 and play some music. We were made very welcome by the staff, especially Sam the Nursery Nurse.

We were keen to be able to play for the children,  being in hospital can be a very stressful time for sick children and their families and we wanted to provide what we hoped was a  fun and interactive session for young hospital patients and their families.

We played different types of music on the guitar and tin whistle, and sang some  modern pop songs and played some traditional Irish Music. 

It was a really wonderful experience, to see the children joining in and smiling - whilst beating a rhythm with some percussion instruments!!  We do hope to come back again and will learn some more songs that may be familiar to the children to help them feel more 'at home' during their stay in hospital.

Thank you for letting us come and visit.

Ciara and Niamh McCorriston

If you are interested in becoming a music or art volunteer yourself, please get in touch on 0121 424 0113.

Lovely Alina's lovely Jelly Song

From one of Daz's sessions at the hospital. Alina is really great and loves music, but was a bit shy of singing so we all joined in. Unfortunately you can only mainly hear me because I'm behind the camera.

West African xylophone music

This is a piece of music composed by two young people on the ward at Heartlands Hospital. I've been doing some sessions on West African instruments and after they learnt some Ugandan xylophone music they made up their own tune!

Huma & Jonny sing Taylor Swift "Crazier"

We run music sessions at Heartlands Hospital alongside the Kids United session in the community. Here one patient who has not sung before, gains confidence in singing thanks to encouragement and help from the amazing Jonny Amos.
Thanks Jonny!

Huma says "thank you, it was amazing. The best experience I've had".

Rapping!

We've come to the end of our sessions on rapping, beatboxing and lyric writing. Here are some of the tracks that our young people have created with James!

These two are from the youth clubs, so James had more time to work with them on lyrics and got their input about what the backing should sound like. He also sampled some of their beatboxing and included that too.
Naseby crew - Drastic by Music4HH
Arceus - character rap - norton hall session 2 by Music4HH

And these are from the sessions at the hospital:
Mckenzie - character rap - heartlands hospital session 3 by Music4HH
Haider AND Baabar - The Adventure by Music4HH

Rapping with James

We are lucky enough to have another brilliant rap artist to run some sessions with us! James Kennaby is working with our young people in the hospital and the youth centres, helping them to write their own lyrics and create their own music tracks.

James encourages our budding rappers to write about what they know by thinking of different things about their lives: activities and hobbies, their family, their thoughts and feelings. Often he gets the young people to compose a section each and adds them together to make a longer verse.

Here's some lyrics that the young people came up with and James has set to music (which I will upload later!)

The Adventure

His name is Red Arrow
He lives in London
And he really loves jumping
He wears adidas
Cos he's all class
He wears red from morning to bed
And because he tried parkour
He's got a broken leg

His friends call him odd
Because he loves playing COD
And when he's online
He talks to his friend Todd all the time

He says he drives a Subaru but that's not true
Instead he's learning to drive in a Daewoo
He fancies a chew so he goes to his friend's barbeque

He travelled to Australia to meet his friend Dalia
Whose washing machine had a recent failure.

Isn't that great? I'm particularly impressed by the washing machine reference.

Curtis at BHH take 2!

Curtis came back to the Children's Ward at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital last week (2nd July) for another session rapping with the young people on the ward. He rapped with Baabar in the sensory room, creating a rap based on things that Baabar likes. First he brainstormed some ideas, then wrote the rap in super quick time!

Hi I’m Baabar, trainers on my feet

Love a bhangra beat and a little doner meat

Loving all the nurses, yeah there’s a few

If I ever bought a car then it would be a Subaru

Can’t beatbox but I’ve got a DVD

Christina went and videoed and made a vid for me

Lights in the room tell me colours that you see

Purples and pinks and there’s blue like the sea

Long limousines and they call it a stretch

All of the nurses I’ll go in and fetch

Baabar’s niece who he loves have you seen her

Amina’s her name but I call her Ameena

But I better wrap it up here

So we can record and we all give a cheer

Lay back now in the chair go to sleep

Press play whenever to hear my little beat.

Next Curtis co-wrote a rap with Morgan, whose twin brother is a rapper too! Curtis took the same approach, first making a chart of all the things Morgan likes and then encouraging him to write about them.

Morgan is my name I won’t tell you again

I text real quick on my black BBM

59 plus in my contact list

And I got a red label around my wrist

Love the Lazy Song by Bruno Mars

And I don’t know why but I’ve got it in my stars

I live in Birmingham with my mom and my brothers

House too small so no room for others

Play football on the big green grass

I’m way too quick so I don’t need to pass

I have a favourite player who is Marlon King

He runs down the pitch and has a good swing

12 inch pizza yeah it’s a beast

Pepperoni and a large meat feast

Box so big that I can’t see the telly

Wait til I’m done see the size of my belly.

Curtis and Brandon's rap at BHH

Curtis Clacey is a brilliant young rapper from Leicester who came in to Heartlands Hospital to work on the Children's Ward to create raps about their lives. He's an amazing freestyler and wowed everybody!

Brandon here is one of the young people he worked with to create this rap. Brandon was wonderful, really enthusiastic and really good at coming up with rhymes! He wrote all of his lines himself. Unfortunately Curtis made me join in too and spoil everything.

Some more graffiti

Rory at Heartlands Hospital

Fazaan at Naseby Centre

Fazaan AKA DJ Biggy

DJ Bash at Naseby Centre

DJ Bash

DJ Techno

DJ Ishy

DJ Bullet Squash

DJ Techno, DJ Ishy and DJ Bullet Squash at Hutton Hall

Learning about graffiti!

The last couple of sessions with Moyma have been about graffiti art. In the first session, we learnt about tags and how they are created. Then last session, we looked at graffiti art and how we could design a logo using graffiti-style lettering. Moyma brought along examples of artwork he has created for other DJ artists, along with some examples of different types of graffiti lettering. The young DJs started to create their own logo using the different graffiti lettering along with pictures and shapes. Here are some of the works-in-progress!

These are from young people on the Children's Ward at Heartlands Hospital and at Hutton Hall and Naseby Centre.

DJ Anees

DJ Babes

Jules

DJ Luciee

This is the new logo Younus (DJ Techno) from Hutton Hall designed for us.

Even Esther and me had a go (Esther is the Project Co-ordinator, I'm the Project Intern).

DJ EJ

My first tag!

DJing!

DJ Moyma on the Children's Ward at Heartlands Hospital

Our DJ sessions have started with the excellent DJ MOYMA (www.moyma.co.uk). Young people on the Children's Ward at Heartlands Hospital and from Naseby Centre and Hutton Hall have been learning about hip hop culture, including its history as well as DJing and dancing, and have had the chance to try mixing and scratching some records. This is a really exciting new part of the project, and it's very popular with the participants :) More and more people are turning up each week, which is great! Sessions at Naseby Centre (5-6pm) and Hutton Hall (6.30-7.30pm) are open to any person under 18.

Younus and Moyma at Hutton Hall

African drumming at Heartlands Hospital

Sarah comes into Heartlands Hospital every week to carry out workshops on the Children's Ward. They must be a challenge, as we never know who's going to be there - sometimes there are a real mix of ages, from babies to teenagers! But Sarah always delivers a great, fun workshop, which the children, parents and staff always benefit from.

Userseb having fun playing the djembe at Heartlands Hospital last week - before we started the Crazy Christmas Carol sing-a-long!

Update (well overdue!)

Our sessions at Heartlands Hospital, Hutton Hall and Naseby Centre are still going on and are going great! Sarah manages to make everyone smile at her sessions on the ward, including different activities for all ages, and taking away a bit of the stress and upset of a hospital stay. She brings her collection of fun and unusual drums, and everybody gets the chance to learn some exciting African rhythms as well as making up their own rhythms, learning about call and response, singing some songs, and generally having fun making a lot of noise! It's really lovely to see the difference it makes in some of the poorly kids and their families.

I had a go at a session myself a couple of weeks ago when Sarah was ill. I took some Ghanaian instruments - drums, shakers and a xylophone - to the Children's Ward and had a lovely time with some of the patients and students from the James Brindley School. We learnt a bit about Ghanaian music and dancing, had a go on all the different instruments, and made up some of our own rhythms and tunes on the xylophone. I had a great time and would love to do it again. The guys from JBS were particularly helpful and friendly, and I always enjoy working with them.

The African drumming club at Hutton Hall has come along really well, with a core group of committed and enthusiastic young drummers. The boys are learning loads, and I am always impressed when I see what Sarah is up to there! They've also had a lot of fun coming up with a name for their group...which will be unveiled in time for their first performance next year. The boys at Hutton work really hard during the sessions and it's really nice to see how they are improving from week to week. They're all very talented and great at learning new things - and have many skills apart from music too! (Last week I was treated to an impromptu magic show!)

Naseby Centre attracts more people each week, it seems! Sarah is great at including new drummers and there's always a fun and informal atmosphere at the sessions. The sessions are at the end of a long day, but Sarah never seems to run out of energy! Some of the boys are getting on really well, really good at remembering patterns and information about the music. As well as having a good drumming session at Naseby each week, it's always a giggle...mainly because of Carlito - which he assures us is his real name :-)

I always look forward to my day of African drumming in Hodge Hill: the three sessions are always really different and always really interesting and fun. I'm learning a lot about effective music leading and teaching complicated African rhythms to beginners. I'm very grateful that Sarah lets me observe all these sessions - and join in too.

This is Mackenzie with Mom and Dad, having a go at African drumming at Heartlands Hospital last week, on the Children's Ward.