Music and Mental Health at City of London Sinfonia

Help City of London Sinfonia (CLS) make a direct and positive impact on people’s mental health. 

How does CLS do this?

• Mindful Music: an innovative combination of mindful meditation and music performance
• Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School: creative music-making activities with young people experiencing a challenging time with their mental health
• Relaxed performances: accessible daytime performances for people who have invisible disabilities

It’s challenging enough to be a young person finding one’s place in the world. There are social pressures to respond to and an identity to be formed, at a time when the body and mind are changing rapidly. Struggling with mental health issues on top of this only makes it more difficult--adding extra stress and anxiety, lowering self-esteem and making it more difficult to build healthy interpersonal relationships.

Since 2015, CLS has been engaging young people at Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School in regular creative music-making activities, which have been shown tobuild self-esteem and social skills through positive interpersonal relationships, and decrease anxiety and stress by channeling creative energy into making music as a group. 

‘Our young people are very individual, and often struggle being part of a group. Music facilitates those social skills that we’re trying to teach in class: listen, take turns, wait. In CLS’s music sessions, you could see that in evidence all the time.’
- Petra, Assistant Headteacher, Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School

Help us transform lives through music.

 

About CLS
Our musicians are dedicated to bringing music-making activities to people who wouldn't normally have access to it. We were one of the first orchestras to establish a year-round programme dedicated to making music in schools, hospitals and communities, and we currently spend over 150 days in the community every year making music with a wide range of people, now reaching over 15,000 per annum.