Community Music
For the last 18 years, the Oxford Concert Party has delivered community music to disadvantaged people and isolated communities across the county. Each year we aim to deliver concerts and workshops in residential homes for the elderly or sufferers with Alzheimer's, in community centres to people with special needs, in isolated village halls and to many primary schools and prisons across the country. With passion and energy, humour and sensitivity we take our listeners on a journey which transforms, heals and humanises, especially those imprisoned by isolation, disability, illness or walls.
Prison Projects:
The Oxford Concert Party started its prison work in 1992. Initially the group played straight concerts in many prisons throughout the UK and Ireland, including HMP Grendon, HMP Bullingdon, HMP Whitemoor, HMP Canterbury, HMP Perth, HMP Leyhill, HMP Dartmoor, Cork Prison, Limerick Prison and Mountjoy Prison. These concerts were always very successful. However, it became apparent from the response of many of the prisoners that a more prolonged and personal contact was needed so the group started doing four-day projects often involving men who had had no previous experience of practical music-making as well as those who already had musical skills. The response of prisoners has been such that the group is determined to try to develop and extend its work in prisons in the belief that music can play a key role in the rehabilitation process. This belief is underwritten by the former Home Secretary, Jack Straw, who expressed a personal interest in the projects.
Education Work:
The Oxford Concert Party has undertaken many concerts and education workshops all over the country for children of primary school age and/or for children with special needs. A one-off concert focuses on audience participation in an informal and relaxed way to make the experience as engaging and enjoyable as possible for the listeners. A project of five workshop sessions with a final 'performance' can cover aspects of music such as the four elements of sound using rhythm games, movement, singing, dancing, simple composition and improvisation, miming and acting. Oxford Concert Party currently offers five such workshops projects.
'Musical Bumps' a general music project with no specific theme.
'A Dustbin Full of Songs' based on environmental issues.
'Where's my Home?' which addresses issues surrounding immigration, refugees and asylum seekers.
'Go With The Flow' a music and drama project based on the history of the Thames which also addresses environmental and global issues surrounding water. This project is led by 2 musicians and an actor.
'Five a Day' a singing project for reception classes on the theme of healthy eating.
Music for Elderly Groups and People with Special Needs:
Since its inception the Oxford Concert Party has made a special commitment to a programme of concerts for the elderly, people with dementia and adults with learning difficulties. This stems from the belief of the Artistic Director of Oxford Concert Party, ARne Richards, in the healing and humanising power of music. As well as his skills as a professional performer and composer, ARne is a highly trained and experienced music therapist.
The Oxford Concert Party has had some wonderful responses over the years from people with special needs, Alzheimer sufferers and the elderly. At the end of a concert at Whitehaven Hospital, Cumbria, where our audience was in the main Alzheimer sufferers, an elderly gentleman rose to his feet and made an eloquent, if slightly muddled, speech of thanks. This would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that as an Alzheimer patient himself the nurses had not heard him utter more than two words in the last five years: the music had unlocked his hitherto imprisoned faculties and encouraged him to speak once more.
Ann, born and brought up in Ireland, was suffering from dementia. Her carers at the Calder Day Centre, Banbury, told us that she did not communicate at all except through anger. When she heard Irish music being played she immediately transformed, laughing and talking, even able to translate the Gaelic title of a tune. Her carers were truly amazed.
Our Intergenerational Project, 'Music and Memories' brings elderly groups together with primary school children and uses both music, poetry and story-telling.
Music in Rural Communities:
The Oxford Concert Party has for many years been involved with bringing music to rural communities, performing in village halls throughout the West Midlands, East Anglia, Central and Southern England, and the Northwest. We have also toured successfully to Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
Singing in Communities:
There are many people who would love to be able to sing but believe they can't - usually because of a negative childhood experience. We believe that everybody can sing and that bringing people together to do so is an immensely rewarding, enriching and empowering experience. Oxford Concert Party's director, ARne Richards, has for many years facilitated choirs for "non-singers" and these have been immensely successful.