Carehome Concerts

We are so excited to be providing our Carehome Concerts in 2024 kindly funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and as part of our The Elixir of Love programme of work. Our concerts last approximately an hour with a professional opera singer and pianist performing a mixture of opera, musical theatre, classical songs and piano solos – pieces that may be less well known and those that will have everyone singing along! There is extensive medical evidence that music benefits health, psychological well-being & cognitive functions, and from our last concert series 98% of residents and staff reported an improvement in mental wellbeing from our performance with also 98% wanting us to come back.

These concerts follow on from our response to the Covid pandemic in 2020 which was to offer Merton & Wandsworth carehomes an outdoor concert in their garden or carpark. After the first lockdown in 2020 none of the carehomes in Merton and Wandsworth had any activities provided by outside professional artists for a long time. For our concerts residents stayed inside the carehome while our performers performed outside in a garden or carpark to ensure the safety of everyone involved. As we are very used to providing activities in all weathers and unusual locations it was fantastic to be able to give residents and staff an uplifting experience & positively help towards the devastating mental health impact of Covid19 on carehomes. We also build on the success of similar sessions at local organisations including Wimbledon Guild, Commonside Trust, FISH, Age UK & Merton & Morden Guild prior to the pandemic, and now are delighted to be engaging local older people in both settings. Past funders for these concerts include Postcode Community Trust, Merton Giving, Wimbledon Foundation and Sylvia Waddilove Foundation while the current funder is the National Lottery Community Fund. We are hugely grateful for the support!