Mental health and wellbeing column: Contributing as equals

It's been a tough couple of years. We have lived through Covid and several lockdowns, during which George Floyd was murdered in full view of the whole world. The shock and horror of this event propelled me to create a free space where black people from all walks of life – hairdressers, mothers, architects, teachers – could sit at a round table online and discuss how seeing the footage had impacted their lives. The discussions were open to anyone who cared to book a seat, and all were welcome to attend and lend their voices to the discussions.

It was through this process that I met Abigail D’Amore and Jennifer Raven from Sound Connections, who then asked me to run a series of events for the charity. This included contributing my thoughts (along with a team of others) to last year's Inclusive Practice in Action (IPIA) conference, which I also hosted. The focus last year was Diversifying the Music Education Workforce, and it was a phenomenal conference held on Zoom and shared live on social media platforms.

In considering the effects of the events of the past two years, it seemed natural in my new role as guest curator at Sound Connections to move in the direction of mental health and wellbeing for this year's conference. I wanted to explore the psychological effects of all the pre-mentioned challenges, added to the fact that Russia had now invaded Ukraine.

As a rule, I haven't enjoyed attending conferences in the past because the lack of representation and diversity has often left me feeling alone and isolated. I didn't want anyone at our event to feel this way, so our process included a broad range of human beings, from as many underrepresented areas of society as was possible, to get to the root of some of the challenges we all face, and to discuss how these challenges affect our mental health.

Our presenters, who gathered at an imaginary ‘round table’ where all could contribute as equals, included Shahana Knight, a childhood trauma specialist; Paul Whittaker, a conductor who is profoundly deaf; Anjana Rinne, an innovative practitioner who specialises in early years; Lisa Cherry an author who has expertise in trauma informed practice; Roger Wilson, director of music at Black Lives in Music; Miss Jacqui, a creative artist in a wheelchair; Bazil Meade, director of the London Community Gospel Choir; myself; Abigail (who produced the event); and a team of incredible young people who took on roles to cover every area we could think of: Yasmine, Emily, Tarnjeet, Tee and Odette.

There was no hierarchy; just humanity coming together to do our best to be honest and authentic, showing up as ourselves, and saying exactly what we thought in a ‘safe space’. The food was prepared by Sal's Kitchen (women who have suffered domestic violence), and it was a fantastic array of vegan dishes. Lunch was followed by breakout sessions that further demonstrated humanity in practice.

Presentations included:

• Early years experiences led by Anjana Rinne
• Young people's voices led by PIE Factory Music
• Youth workers, ML Community Enterprise from Brixton, who also performed at the end of the conference
• Inspirational Singing with Bazil Meade.

Takeaways include the power and impact of:

• Listening deeply to lived experience expressed honestly
• Allowing delegates and presenters to write their thoughts and experiences of the day using oil pastels
• The importance of variety and diversity in leadership, all operating from the spirit of kindness, humanity, inclusion, openness, and transparency, and how these ingredients provided a rich experience for all who were able to be present
• Everyone feeling safe to be themselves, feeling emotional, being supported, grounded and impacted by the truths that all were able to share in this space
• The absence of hierarchy – the leaders of this event, Abigail and I, led by serving.

The Sound Connections team who were directly involved in putting this process together were incredibly humble. Together they modelled love, service, and care – for each other and everyone in the space. The icing on the cake was the expressions of youth voice: young women, Abi and Hajar, who felt safe enough to express their ideas on the world and lead the room with innovative declarations.

www.sound-connections.org.uk