The kantele, ‘her’ personality, and a Nordic hospice setting Last month Tia visited Wolfgang to follow him and his kantele as they made their rounds at the hospice. It is obvious that Wolfgang’s kantele does a lot of beautiful work. Now Wolfgang and Tia (and, in fact, the kantele) are writing an article about that …
Author Archives: gamutexe
On ‘Late’ Learning and Creativity
Who Cannot Learn? Wolfgang, Fraser, Gary and Tia are delighted that our article on ‘late’ learning is now published in a Special Issue of Scuola Democratica, Edited by Anna Lisa Tota and Antonietta De Feo. Other articles in this rich SI address Disability and Arts Education, Prison Theatre, Epistemology, Educational Research Training, Teaching Sociology through …

Rachel Verney, An Ode of Thanks We’ve been meeting with our Project Consultant, Rachel Verney, on and off throughout the analysis stage of Care for Music. Rachel was trained by Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins and has had vast experience working as a music therapist, and training many, now quite senior and well-known, music therapists. …
Gary Ansdell and Mercedes Pavlicevic Receive 2022 European Music Therapy Confederation Award
The Care for Music Team is very pleased to announce that Care for Music Investigator, Gary Ansdell and his research partner at Nordoff Robbins, Professor Mercedes Pavlicevic have received the European Music Therapy Confederation Award for 2022. The Conference meets every three years. We are very happy to be able to include Gary’s message of …
“Do you think they sang at the Last Supper?”
Easter at Hill House The day I start working at Hill House I ring the bell and to my surprise a priest answers it. She just happens to be near the door, getting ready to do a communion service for a small group of residents in a side room. When I announce myself as the …
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Participatory Analysis
Using albums & mosaics to understand data Gary: We’ve both collected so much data from our practical work now, and it’s time for us to start doing something with it. Where I am now is at the stage of reviewing and sorting from my practice in Hill House. How to make sense of it. What to …
A Christmas Carol
This time last year, all over again….. “A rainy, dark day… in every sense! We’ve just heard of a new lockdown throughout most of the UK starting on the 26th of December, with a new variant of C19 [delta] rapidly spreading. Happy Christmas!! And, of course, the residents of Hill House won’t be able to see their families over Christmas… everything just feels very …
Award for Fraser Simpson
The UK Mental Health and Wellbeing Awards 2021, Support During the Pandemic We are thrilled to announce that the UK Mental Health and Wellbeing Awards 2021, Support During the Pandemic, was won by Care for Music Team Member, Fraser Simpson. Fraser won the award on behalf of Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy for his work including work that …
Drawing In
First poems, now pictures. Why? They say you really start to see things when you draw them. Recently, we’ve been experimenting with drawing, the notion of Goethe’s gentle methods always on our mind. We’ll probably never be a Rembrandt (though we are learning and improving). But the process of spending time looking, and learning to look by …
Even Ruud on Rhizomes & Resonant Moments
Tia’s essay on Even Ruud’s Toward A Sociology of Music Therapy: Musicking as a Cultural Immunogen(Barcelona Publishers, 2020) has just been published in Contemporary Sociology, the American Sociological Association’s bi-monthly book review journal. This picture shows you a rhizome (and a frog) because Ruud’s book deals brilliantly with the notion that health and wellbeing are rhizomatic, that …