How can we support more mental health inclusive choirs?
Download our free Singing Side By Side toolkit here!
The result of a two year long research and practitioner action research programme with a multidisciplinary team of researchers and group singing facilitators , this free toolkit compiles insights, practical ideas, spaces for reflections and resources to support more mental health inclusive singing groups!
The toolkit is designed to be flexible - you can “dip into” a section or work through the whole toolkit as required. There’s more context in our blog here.
We’d love to hear how you use it and you can join our network including our Community of Practice meeting to meet other singing facilitators (next one: Monday 6th November, 2023 at 5pm) here!
See below for the video of our launch event contextualising this work and a bit more about the authors!
Watch our launch event discussing the toolkit and research survey
The people behind the resource
The project was led by an interdisciplinary team working across research and practice with Dr Yoon Irons (University of Derby) as Principal Investigator.
We thank the MARCH Mental Health Network for funding this project through their MARCH Plus Fund 2020-2021 from the Economic and Social Research Council. We are also grateful to all our participants who took part in consultations, expert panel discussions, online surveys, and action research. Without their contributions, this toolkit would not have been possible. Our action researchers, who have spent hours with us so generously sharing their insights, are:
This toolkit was written as a team, and edited and designed by Science Ceilidh including Resource Development Lead, Alexia Karageorgis, with artwork by ET (@grey.sok) and shared under Creative Commons License. This means you are very welcome to print, copy, and share the resource attributing to Singing Side By Side (though without modifying the original).
Thank you also to Making Music for writing a section on Performing Rights (Section 6) and members of the SLaM Recovery College for helping read through the resource.