Songbirds Taking Wing Project funded by Youth Music:  Young Creator musicians

Committed to workforce development, Songbirds are creating new opportunities for emerging and early career musicians to join their team through their Youth Music funded programme, Taking Wing.

Young Creator roles will offer training and practical opportunities for musicians under the age of 25  who want to develop their professional musical skills working with children and young people in hospital settings.  Songbirds are keen to include within this young people who have lived experience of the healthcare system and/or of spending periods of time in hospital. Songbirds wish to enable these young people to have access to opportunities to work with other young musicians and to build their skills and confidence in hospital music-making.

In 2023 our first 2 Young Creator musicians joined our team. In 2024 we engaged a second 2  Young Creator musicians. Our vision is to continue to develop further Young Creator roles and opportunities to increase the reach and diversity of our workforce to include young people who have spent periods of time in hospital and to learn from young people’s lived experiences of health and music-making to inform future development of our programme at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. 

In 2024 we will have the new opportunity to work alongside RMCH’s Youth Team to enable us to begin to create new co-designing opportunities for young patients, offer co-creative musical activities, and create co-designing listening spaces, to allow us to work in partnership with young patients and ensure our future plans for music making at RMCH are co-designed by children and young people who have experience and understanding of the healthcare system.