When local musician Andy Abbott began working as a Creative Practitioner in psychiatric wards in Yorkshire as part of a three-month NHS pilot scheme there was a clearly defined measurement of success: to help reduce the number of violent incidents.
The pilot scheme was delivered by Yorkshire-based charities Creative Minds and Everybody Arts to demonstrate the value of creative activity on acute mental health wards. “The first time I went in, I played a set on my guitar as a way of introducing myself. Then afterwards, I’d just hang out and carry on playing, and it started to become much more freeform and responsive.”
It was an unusual environment for Andy. As a key figure in the Leeds DIY music scene and guitarist in primal-rock bands, he was accustomed to 40-minute sets and attentive, paying audiences. He was now performing for up to six-hours, to connect with people with dementia and memory problems, and who had highly complex and challenging needs.
“I knew I wanted to do something with handmade instruments. I took my mbira and a steel-pan drum. With those, I can get quite nice, ambient, resonant sounds. Then I started to bring in more percussion instruments. Sometimes I was going in with synthesizers, loop pedals and effects too.”
As an artistic response to the project, Andy has created an album under his solo moniker ADRA, called Music for Psychiatric Wards (and Fluid Structures). It is a nine-track collection of immersive soundscapes that reflect the music he created over the course of the pilot scheme and the environment in which it was created.
Each track feels focused on a particular tonal mood, giving you a sense of the broad palette of unique scenarios Andy was adapting to. In that respect, the album is reminiscent of composers like La Monte Young, Hans Otto or Arco Part, where the approach is to pick out a nuanced emotion and explore it fully.
That said, there is also adventure in the album’s minimalism. It feels much like a meandering, richly-adorned Greg Foat composition, split out into its constituent parts, each given the chance to live and breathe independently of one another.
The album title is a purposeful nod to ambient pioneer, Brian Eno. Andy found that Eno’s narrative of creating music appropriate to the space in which it is to be played – as in Music For Airports – seeped into his consciousness as he went deeper into the project.
“There are spaces where people might congregate informally, or hang out, or pass by, and I wanted to be in those spaces,” he explains. “So it felt a bit more like I was soundtracking the ward, or even busking in it.
“The architecture is interesting. The environment of some of these hospitals is panoptic. People respond very sensitively to each other, so if one person’s agitated or happy, it can spread through the ward quite quickly. I wasn’t always going in and just playing calming music. Some days I could tell it was a very flat, boring day. People would get frustrated. So I’d do something more uplifting. You see the whole range of emotions in a very short amount of time.”
The overarching goal of the pilot, to reduce violent incidents, was achieved. But that tells only a fraction of the story. Within that, different groups responded to different scenarios, instruments and sounds. Men aged 65 and over were initially more reluctant to interact than others, although Andy found there were ways he could spark their intrigue.
“The men would gravitate towards the kalimbas, the little thumb pianos that look like flattened spoon ends on a bit of wood, and a Cigar Tin guitar that I’ve got. It was made in Cromford by Dave Blanchard out of a pickled onion tin and a chair leg. They’d be interested in these as objects or a piece of engineering. Then, of course, as they were handling it, it would make noises. I’d start to play along and then you’re suddenly making music together. That was an interesting response, because if you asked those people, ‘do you want to play music?’ they would probably be turned off.”
Equally, Andy found that playing very open-ended experimental music helped dissolve barriers of resistance.
“I’d always say, there are no wrong notes. You’re then taking away that pressure of failing. Men, it seems, are particularly conscious about failing in those scenarios.”
As such findings surfaced, Andy had the idea of building an ambient music board, like a tray you can sit on your lap and play to produce soundscapes. He commissioned experimental musician and instrument-builder Sam McLoughlin (of Samandtheplants/Folklore Tapes) to fabricate the instrument based on designs made with staff and service-users on the wards.
Increased funding has gone towards making another four boards that will live in the wards’ activities cupboards. Andy has been training occupational therapists and other Creative Practitioners in how to best use them.
The power of music to heal the mind, body and soul is not entirely new, of course. In fact, it can be traced back to ancient origins. Vibration therapy was used in ancient Greece, Egyptian priest-physicians used music for physical healing and as early as 400BC Hippocrates played music for patients suffering from mental illness.
The senses can be touched by music (and indeed by other art forms). It can serve as a guiding light, helping someone with a treatable condition towards an enhanced life, loosening some of their often-robust layers of trauma and conditioning.
But, despite human civilisation having toyed with such practices for many centuries, there is still, it seems, a vast ocean of potential to be realised. The fact the pilot scheme Andy worked on was instigated by the NHS is to be roundly applauded. Andy acknowledges the project was “quite brave.” One can only hope that his work provides a gateway to further exploration in this field and encourages the right level of investment.
There was an additional and very personal dimension to Andy’s involvement with the project. His dad had been in a psychiatric ward towards the end of his life following a head injury. Andy wanted to “go back into those spaces and understand them a bit more.”
In doing so, it also gave him an insight into the roles and lives of the staff and patients in those hospitals.
“I was able to go in and treat it as a project, learn from it and translate it into other areas of my life. I did find it incredibly rewarding and energising work. Even though it’s intense and some things you encounter are very difficult, I came back pretty much every day feeling quite full of energy. Without wanting to sound too cheesy about it, you realise just how amazing the NHS is and how valuable it is that people do that job day in, day out, with little reward or public acknowledgement.”
Music for Psychiatric Wards (and Fluid Structures) is released 1st November on ADRA Records.
Listen on Bandcamp
ADRA live performances in Calderdale
Sunday 3rd Nov – Victoria Theatre, Halifax supporting Ex-Easter Island Head and Kar Pouzi. More>
Wednesday Nov 27th – Imaginary Wines, Todmorden with Edgars Rubenis and Marlene Ribeiro. More>
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