[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
changed smothers that was the title of
the song that you have just heard it was
a song that was written from children
from primary school children who came
along to sign Columbus Hospice to work
on an intergenerational project between
their school community and the community
of the hospital where I work as the our
team it was a collaborative project that
brought Hospice together with 50 music
and Victoria primary school and in that
space of breaking different generations
together interesting things happen and
very often people get very very angry my
god could you bring children really will
you bring children in the hospice where
people are dying and it's something
about testing children and testing
children to be heard to share their own
experience and also to be alongside what
matters in life and trust them to be the
caregivers but also the care receivers
in that project what was very important
is that we didn't think only of the
group of the ten children who came to
hospice but we thought of the whole
school community without their teachers
of their peers in the school so the
family support team at the hospice
alongside the arts team delivered
training in the school to help school
staff to deal with change loss and grief
which are common experiences to all of
us but we very often feel unequipped to
deal with these issues in life and
something about other hospices and the
art within hospices can support other
communities and people in these journeys
in their lives this is an example of a
project where the arts can transform
living and dying but in our modern
society and I guess when I speak about
modern society I speak as a somebody who
grew up in the Western world you know
perhaps in Malawi or in other parts of
the world doesn't dying
is experienced differently but in the
Western world living in time are very
often seen as these two opposite ends in
one's life as something that as if
living is happening until dying starts
coming and very often that coming it's
biomedically defined some other people
would say perhaps are all part of the
same spectrum and death and dying is at
the end of that spectrum and hospices
have done an amazing work over the last
50 years changing healthcare for people
who are time but what we know from
recent public polls is a public opinion
has not really changed about death and
dying people are really scared to talk
about it
that is a taboo and very often in the
society where we strive to succeed to
measure to predict to be in control to
be powerful that actually can be an
unwelcome guest to our lives it's
something that exposes our vulnerability
as people are limits as people but what
I have seen in my work as a music
therapist in hospices over the past
years is that when you start recognizing
your limits you open up your
vulnerability you're actually open up to
your huge potential of what makes the
real you Barbara Monroe who used to be
the chief executive of st. Christopher's
Hospice in southeast London when I used
to work in the past
she was think that one of the tragic
consequences of our death denying
culture is just when people need our
social support the world often treats
them in embarrassment I'm exciting this
male creating a kind of social death
long before physical demands occurs and
we're all responsible
about that it's not the job of health
care practitioners when we talk about
social death is us do and that you do
think perhaps when a friend of yours
when somebody that you loved became
really unwell they were reaching the end
of their lives how did you deal with
that and I'm sure we all find it
difficult to have a conversation to have
a frank conversation about how we feel
how we are together in that place but it
is when we open that space that we can
be different that we can be a fuller
entity within and between each other so
as Co species
and society hopefully recognizes that
urgent need for us to change our
attitudes towards death and dying we
come to realize that we need to start
imagining hospice care and as I say
hospice care has done amazing things
over the past years but there's such a
huge potential and I believe from my own
experience working as a music therapist
and the arts leaders in Columbus that
the arts can be a fantastic catalyst for
us to start reimagining who we could be
who are who will be coming constantly
and part of that is to look if you like
this spectrum from specialists to
everyday environments from private to
public environments and care for the
dying and not only for the time if I may
say actually very often is perceived as
it needs to happen within private and
specialist environments by specialists
professionals and yes that's true
sometimes that is necessary but we have
a responsibility to look at the person
in their natural context of living and
dying and the hospice is having a
fantastic possibility in taking care
into people's everyday life and in the
community settings were the natural live
and they should naturally die
this is an artwork it was created a few
months ago it was a woman who was
admitted at the hospice for end-of-life
care she started working on this big
white canvas and started building it up
with plaster and you can see there's a
direction going up she became ill and
she died and that piece of art was left
unfinished and I think there is
something very powerful in that image
which is actually portrayed at the
moment I think all numbered hospice and
so that kind of white canvas if you like
of that potential of what it could
become what it could be but also shows
the power of the art of articulating
things that are difficult to articulate
verbally perhaps but also shows that
unfinished business matters and very
often we are very concerned about
completing things about having things in
food but what if we stay calm in the
midst of change in life and we can
embrace things that can be unfinished
things that can still have questions
within them and the art can contain them
in a very creative way and as you heard
in that song which a change matters and
then things just change matters but a
teraflop children if the hospice
patients who work together could have
articulated these experiences which has
certain experiences everybody coming to
them from their own life experience of
course I don't know if that that song
format was not there whether this
experience could have been communicating
that way so in the hospice what we do is
this opening up to the everyday life and
also what communities complain is that
we open our doors in Greek we say Felix
and Mia we say being Phil knows to the X
and us being a friend to the stranger
and sometimes this stranger is the
person that you don't know but it can be
also death that you haven't really
thought about it in your lifespan so far
so we bring in
local musicians they are not specialist
palliative care practitioners but
they're musicians and their everyday
people that they can bring the
musicianship and care for each other and
be a human companion to someone's
turning that environment we also bring
children to dance and what that
experience of being on the world when
you consistent people coming outside
with their beds in the corridors to
appreciate children dancing or we
exhibit patients and Families artwork
art and music very often helps you to
stop and think and in some ways not
being productive you know in our world
of productivity and efficiency a month
ago that project that some great
incredible delayed children received
three healthcare awards in the UK for me
the most important one was it was the
patient's choice and that made me stop
and think why did patients chose that
project as one of the best in health
care in the UK and one of the questions
that we got through their feedback was
that something that a created the space
through music and arts that people could
come together and articulate things that
we don't articulate in the society and
the second one is that we worked the
whole community and we work towards
creating resources and generating new
images of what hospice care could be we
generate an image of a hospice that can
be resource hub for the community
co-created by the people who make that
community by the people who live and
they die and to bear in mind we're all
dying from a moment that we were born
we're all in the process of dying and
the moment that we realized that our
living and everyday life is transformed
immediately and this is what I think the
arts can be a catalyst towards
flourishing and I deliberately use the
word flourishing here because it if you
like transcends that polarity of Health
and illness
we're always somewhere in between but
what makes
to flourish is that interconnection with
other people in the society that we can
support each other in our journeys and
the arts can be fantastic catalyst
bringing that into our lives so closing
the talk they're going to invite you to
think how do you engage with music and
arts when a piece of music comes to an
end is a death if you like in itself
it's an end in itself how do you engage
with the same things in your lives and
how much do you engage with death and
dying trans concepts that can transform
your daily living that can make you a
fuller person that can enable you to be
alongside other people thank
[Applause]