Special Events

Colour & Crescendo

Colour & Crescendo is an Arts for Health project which took place at St George’s hospital, Stafford and The Redwoods Centre, Shrewsbury. The project involved two high quality musicians, Richard Taylor, piano and Sarah Whittingham, violin, both from Manchester Camerata Orchestra. Richard and Sarah came into our mental health settings to perform lovely and uplifting music over the summer of 2021. Their music brought joy and re-connection to our inpatients and staff after months of very little creative arts being allowed in the wards.

Alongside the music we also engaged two other artists: Debbie Todd, visual arts and Jean Atkin, poet. They worked with our activity co-ordinators to invite inpatients to express themselves about the pandemic, the last 18 months. Using colour, text, line and graphics, inpatients and staff created a huge range of beautiful and meaningful artworks on postcards - expressions of how it felt, what had helped them through and what were they most looking forward to. 

During August and September 2021, Richard and Sarah took the postcards away to devise and create two new compositions, inspired by the imagery and text on the postcards as well as their own conversations and connection with the participants on the wards.

In early October, with the new pieces written and composed, Richard and Sarah returned to the hospital sites to perform their new music for the first time!

We will continue to develop and share this project more widely during 2022.