Podcast season 4: Episode 10 – Sing Our Story: how personalised songs can be part of life story work

Please note that this transcript is auto-generated and therefore will contain some errors and natural pauses in conversation.

TRAILER: [00:00:00] Hello. This is a reminder that as well as listening to this show on a browser via the Creative Life Story Work website, you can also listen to it on your favorite audio app too. You’ll find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music, YouTube, music, and many others. Search Creative Life Story Work podcast.

DAWN: Welcome to the Creative Life Story Work podcast, where we explore how to make life story work better for all care experienced children and young people. Creative life story work is an approach which can improve children and young people’s lives and their relationships with others, both at home and at school.

It’s based on the Rose model of therapeutic life story work.

[00:01:00] Every month we’ll explore a different aspect of creative life story work, and we’ll give insight into how you can use this approach to help care experienced children and young people make sense of their past and build a brighter future. Today we are talking about a gorgeous project called Sing Our Story.

It’s all about connection, co-creation, and the power of music to bring children, families, and early year settings together. We are joined by two guests who know this project inside out. First of all, we have Joseph Robb, Head of Service – Looked After Children at Darlington Borough Council, and we also have our very own Lucy Ridley, the Blue Cabin Project Manager, who makes sure it all runs smoothly and meaningfully.

A very warm welcome to the Podcast studio to the both of you.

LUCY: Thanks, Dawn.

[00:02:00] DAWN: You are very welcome. So I wondered, maybe Lucy, if we could start at the beginning for people listening who haven’t come across Sing Our Story before, what is it all about?

LUCY: Good question, Dawn. So Sing Our Story – it’s a good place to start at the beginning, isn’t it?

Sing Our Story is a collaboration with Blue Cabin ourselves and with Groundswell Arts, a charity from London, and we’re working together to bring their model out of London and up into the North East of England. And we’re taking part in a pilot project to begin with while we’re testing it out up in this region.

[00:03:00] And Darlington, one of our wonderful local authorities, has been our first partner to test it out with. So it is a co-creation project. As you mentioned earlier Dawn, working with songwriters and families with foster carers, birth, family, and care-experienced children and babies, actually in the case of Darlington, to co-create a song about that child, about their likes, things that they like to do, their favorite food, for example, favorite songs, and then the song is gifted to the child and the family and also the local authority has taken that song and is kept in the child’s records for them to perhaps look back at in years to come if they were to access their records.

DAWN: Wow. And Joseph, when Lucy first talked to you about Sing Our Story, what inspired you to think, yes, this is, this is what we’ll need in Darlington. Why did you, why did you make that decision to say yes, please?

[00:04:00] JOSEPH: Well, I think like most projects it’s quite hard to say no. I’m just writing that down. Um, write that down. No, that being said, this absolutely amazing project aligns really well to another project that we currently have on ongoing in partnership with Blue Cabin (This is The Place) and also aligns itself really well to our relational based way of working with children. We have recently commissioned something, a program where we can capture children’s life stories called Virtual Memory Box. [00:05:00] And when Lucy initially spoke about this project, I thought this is absolutely beautiful because you know, a lot of our children are, are babies and they move on to adoption, remain in care, return to birth family, and these wonderful foundations, the building blocks of their lives are quite often missed and social workers come and go, but these wonderful times of who’s been caring for the child and you know, the networks at that time, their memories and understanding why they may think some things later in life, why they might smell things, you know, all those sensory things that we take for granted and our parents or birth family can tell us about, our looked after children certainly don’t have the privilege of that. So when Lucy spoke about this project, I thought it just matches.

DAWN: Oh, how fantastic. And just in case anybody else is listening, you mentioned there two things. This is The Place, another Blue Cabin project, but you also mentioned Virtual Memory Box who, who’ve also been on one of our podcasts as well – Christian Brock, talking about Virtual Memory Box.

People should go back onto our website and have a look at that. But what an incredible project that is and I can absolutely see how this would marry beautifully with the work that you’ve commissioned them to do as well.

[00:06:00] Lucy, so I wondered, you’ve talked a bit about what Sing Our Story is, but could you talk a bit about the process, what actually happens when a family walk into the workshop with the musicians who are gonna be working on the project?

LUCY: So working with our, with our songwriters? Yeah. They, so it is that session that takes place. So it’s a one-to-one or whatever that family network might look like, where they come in and they share stories about the child or the young person or the baby, because we’ve got songs about babies in Darlington. But I think why it’s worked really wonderfully in Darlington is because, as we mentioned, This is The Place has been running for 18 months in Darlington and is a term time weekly early years music session that’s delivered by two fantastic musicians, Katie and Carol.

And it was in fact one of those musicians, Carol, who was working as a songwriter on this project. So already, they have deepened relationships.

[00:07:00] They’ve been working with these families and children for many of them for 18 months, which is the length of time the project has been running so far. And so they know these children. One of the foster carers described the musicians as their extended family because they’ve got to know her, they’ve got to know this child over a long period of time. So although they were coming in to have these conversations about the child, which was mainly led by the adult because the baby can’t tell us.

But also the songwriters are bringing a wealth of experience and knowledge of how, what song does the child fall asleep to, for example, in the music sessions, what makes them giggle and, and all of those things. So I think that that deepened relationship is there already between the foster carers and the child, and the musicians and the songwriters.

So I think because we’ve got that there already, I think the work was already, you know, the way of working together was really embedded.

[00:08:00] So that’s been just so lovely to see those relationships develop. And in fact, Dawn and Joseph, I was in the the weekly session the other day, and at snack time, one of the children got her foster carer’s phone, put the song on, and was listening to the song that Carol had recorded her and was pointing to Carol going, “you singing?”, and Carol’s going, “yes, that’s your song!”. And apparently all the extended family know the song and they all sing along to it. And that was just wonderful to witness that song being, being used on a regular basis.

DAWN: Oh, that’s just lovely to see like the ripples going out from that, from that child’s story into the significant adults in their lives as well. What do you think are the impacts on the children involved who’ve had songs written for them?

[00:09:00] JOSEPH: I think the impact is quite difficult to see initially, because for some of our children, because of their their age, I think we’re gonna see the impact later. One impact that I did observe, I had an absolute privilege of being part of a song that was played to a young person who returned back to the care of their parents. And in the session the song was played to the parents and the foster carer and the child together.

And I think that was just lovely because then that CD also goes with the parents and the child. So as Lucy mentioned, our child in our care, and also the parents could play that as well. And also that, I suppose that air time where maybe the child wasn’t in the parent’s care, the CD says a lot about the child, what the child likes, and how the child’s developed. And the hope is that the parent can continue that. And that song almost educates the parents as much as it supports.

[00:10:00] LUCY: Yeah, and the hope is that the song stays with that child, isn’t it? But the fact that actually working in partnership with the local authority, that it’s been added to that child’s life story – being uploaded into memory box means that if anything happens to that song and when it gets lost, it will always be there for that child to who will then be an adult to come back if they wanted to access their records. And I said to one of the songwriters, beause it’s a hundred years, isn’t it Joseph, that that would be there. I said, your song’s gonna be there for a hundred years. I think she was like, whoa, and there’s something about that song that will last long, a long after we have gone, and that song’s still gonna be there and there’s so much within the songs that’s meaningful to the child.

DAWN: And, and so let’s talk about some of those songs then. Is there, is there one of those songs or a story from one of those songs that stands out for you that you keep perhaps thinking about that’s stayed with you?

[00:11:00] LUCY: So we’ve currently got four songs already and we are delivering the next block in partnership with, with Redcar and Cleveland Council. But I’m just thinking about one of the songs that stands out. They all stand out for me. They’re all amazing. But one of them, I’m thinking of a child who had moved from foster care and had moved to live with their adoptive family and how the foster carer had talked about that child’s favorite song, which is ‘We are all going on a train’. And the actions in that song, and Carol, the songwriter, had included that as part of the song because it was really important to that child and it helped to settle that child at times when they might be unsettled, feeling anxious and so that became part of that story that was passed on to that adoptive family. It became really important that they knew that that song was really important to that child and that it helped that child.

[00:12:00] So I think it just seems like such a simple thing, doesn’t it? But, but actually to know something that comforts that child and that child’s a baby as well, to know what’s comforting that baby and to be able to pass that on, like Joseph said, it’s that knowledge, isn’t it, that could get forgotten about. You know, it doesn’t seem an important thing, but actually for that child, it’s, it’s a huge thing, isn’t it? That somebody knows a song that settles you.

DAWN: Yeah. And also it’s like the song is helping people see that child well as an individual, their quirks and their joys. That as you say, that are there for a hundred years. Ah, that scares me. I mean, how people will be listening to music in a hundred years!

JOSEPH: I think something else for me as well about the songs, I’m thinking of children who do go home and sometimes children could be sort of torn between this place of loyalty between a carer and their parents.

[00:13:00] And you know, may say to the parents, I don’t like this or I don’t like that, but the song actually supports what, what they do like, so you know, some of those regulation rhythms, some nursery rhymes, it certainly supports that.

DAWN: Let’s have a short break so you can hear all about our Creative Life Story Work membership offer.

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Maybe you are a social worker: I think we forget at our peril that actually telling a child the story of their early life is one of the most profound uses of social work power that we could ever operate.

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A Creative Life Story Work membership will give you or your whole team access to resources, including activities you can use in direct work with children and young people, training with life story work experts and lots more.

And I think a lot of our children are looking for meaning, looking for, you know, well why is it I feel this way when my friends don’t. Why is it I get angry internally and my friends don’t? The greatest thing we see is when we are able to say to young people, this is your story. This is about who you are. And then children towards the end say, it’s not my fault that these things happened, but it is something that I can do something about. And once we have that, then we know we can move forward.

Find out about our membership for individuals and for organizations on our website, creativelifestorywork.com.

[00:15:00] DAWN: Do you ever catch yourself singing one of the lullabies later in the day once you’ve heard them?

LUCY: I do dawn, and at the same time rocking the trolley in the supermarket, but my children are now teenagers, so you can imagine the look on their faces when I do these sorts of things.

JOSEPH: Yeah, they are catchy and they are to certain themes, you know, whether it’s a Taylor Swift type theme, but the melodies are very catchy.

DAWN: We talked at the beginning about what makes Sing Our Story so special is the collaboration, but that what you are describing there is the parents, the musicians, foster carers, all working together.

I just wonder what that looks like behind the scenes. I suppose I’m getting back into the workshop again. I wonder what’s that like? How does that work?

[00:16:00] LUCY: Again, working with fantastic partners like. Darlington and, and Joseph, you made me laugh, Joseph “Well, when Lucy asks, you have to say yes”. You don’t have to say yes, but hopefully he knows it’s gonna be good and it’s gonna be held really safely. And we work with a fantastic team of creative people and that everybody will be looked after and held in that space safely and you know, all the checks are in place.

And I think also it was just a really wonderful opportunity that because we’ve got those deepened relationships with foster carers and children, I automatically wanted to test the model in Darlington because I knew from my point of view that that I can go to Joseph and go, “Joseph, we’ve got this, can we come and try it?” And I knew that we had that relationship and that we have that trust on each side. And also that the musicians and the songwriters have that trust and that the foster carers trust our musicians to work with them and to hold that safely. [00:17:00] Because it’s quite personal, isn’t it? Going into a room and just telling a stranger all about my child or children or, you know what I mean? Because actually that’s very personal, isn’t it? To start to talk about a child and particularly a child who might be currently within care. So yeah. So there’s a lot of holding everything and everybody safely to make that happen.

JOSEPH: I think from my perspective, all the work that I’ve done with Lucy and colleagues in Blue Cabin, it’s always extremely well thought out. The child is always at the center of all of their thoughts and almost how they’re pivotal. Everything works around the child, but also keeping the carers in in mind as well around their confidence, as Lucy mentioned.

[00:18:00] So I think for me, when, whenever Lucy brings something new, I’m always all ears because my brain doesn’t work in the same way that Lucy does her Blue Cabin work. It really doesn’t. And whilst somebody understands it, it’s almost trust in the process and I think that’s how our carers feel as well because they’re so well cared for and so well held and supported, whether that’s by the artists, whether by Lucy or others, I think everyone just feels comfortable because of the relationship that’s already established there.

DAWN: And I think that’s testament Lucy, that you talked about before about doing a project prior to that; This is The Place and so it was already well-formed relationships before we then go on to something new as well. So it’s testament to our relationship at a partnership level, which then is mirrored by the participants as well.

So that’s a really lovely thing. What’s next on the horizon for Sing Our Stories? Are there more families and more settings getting involved? You mentioned Redcar, Lucy, what’s the next steps?

[00:19:00] LUCY: So we’re currently in the start of block two out of three in Redcar. So this This is The Place is delivered with Darlington, but it’s also delivered in Redcar and Cleveland. We actually work with their virtual school. So we are doing a very similar thing to Darlington where we’re working with foster carers and children and families in to create songs. We have an artist, Katie, who is working with them, and she’s a regular musician who works on the program as part of that, so she will be co-creating songs with them as a songwriter. And then finally I’m in discussions with Gateshead Virtual School. So in contrast to Darlington and Redcar, where we’ve been working with babies and earlier children, we’re looking to work with a wider age range. So looking to work with post 16 as alongside secondary aged young people.

[00:20:00] So of course that will be a whole different way of delivering the program. And going, oh, well actually we can’t deliver that at two o’clock in the afternoon. Teenagers want to do that at seven o’clock at night. So what does that mean? So yeah, that will be the next block and, and hopefully all of this will be finished by the summer of 2025. And then we need to look beyond that. How are we going to fund that as we move forward?

DAWN: Thank you. And Joseph, if someone’s listening and they’re thinking, oh, this sounds amazing, I’d like to bring this into my children’s service, what would you say to them?

JOSEPH: I would absolutely say, go for it. I think words and pictures alone can say a lot. But I think when we are actually creating songs that are co-produced with carers, with their children, I don’t think there’s anything more pure than that, than understanding a child’s earlier life. Yeah, definitely. Go for it.

[00:21:00] DAWN: thank you. And. My final question to both of you, you might want to take a bit of time to think about it, is what’s one thing that Sing Our Story has taught you personally?

JOSEPH: that’s a great question. As a professional, we believe we know our children. We believe we know the life story which has been narrated by a social worker at that time. But that isn’t the child. That doesn’t bring the child to life. We know in bits and pieces from a carer, you know, that they give us, but actually we go home at five o’clock. We’re not there weekends, we’re not there at bed times. We’re not there in important, significant times of child’s life. Foster carers can bring the child to to life in a greater way than any electronic record would.

[00:22:00] LUCY: And actually to be honest, mine links with, Joseph’s. Through Sing Our Story, through This is The Place, I just have huge admiration for foster carers. They come into the room and they fill it with love and laughter, tears when children move on. And I see it all and I just am amazed at what they do. And, and so really that’s taught me so much, just hats off to foster carers. They are fantastic people.

DAWN: Thank you. Thank you both so much for joining us today and sharing this incredible project. It’s not just about music, but about identity, relationships, and giving children a voice from the very, very start. Thank you very, very much.

[00:23:00] Whether you are a foster carer, someone who has experience with the care system, or you work with children and young people, we hope this episode has given you an insight into how we can make life story work better for young people and how you can use it in your own practice.

You can find out more about Creative Life Story Work on our website, creativelifestorywork.com, and you can find us on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. Please do get in touch there with any comments or questions as we’d love to hear from you. If your podcast app allows you, please do leave us a review as it really helps others to find our show.

So until next month. Bye for now.