<\/p>
The UK\u2019s first orchestra created to support the mental health of emergency services personnel is to give its debut concert in central London on Friday 28 October.<\/p>\n
The Blue Light Symphony Orchestra<\/a><\/strong>, comprising members of the police, ambulance and fire services, is to perform Shostakovich\u2019s Piano Concerto no. 2 and Beethoven\u2019s Fifth Symphony at St John\u2019s, Smith Square<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Proceeds from Friday\u2019s concert will fund music therapy for 999 personnel suffering serious mental health problems such as PTSD, chronic stress and anxiety.<\/p>\n The orchestra\u2019s conductor, Detective Sergeant Seb Valentine, who works in Surrey Police, set up the orchestra in 2015 for players\u2019 enjoyment. \u2018Music has always been important to my mental wellbeing, and I wanted to share that,\u2019 said Valentine, who entered the police after training at the Royal College of Music and working as a freelance musician for six years.<\/p>\n The orchestra has held a number of ad hoc workshop days \u2013\u00a0which worked better around members\u2019 shift patterns than regular rehearsals\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and appeared on ITV\u2019s A Night for the Emergency Services<\/em> in 2017. After a long break around the pandemic, Friday\u2019s concert marks the orchestra\u2019s first public performance. The ensemble, which is a registered charity, includes 999 personnel and NHS staff, members of the armed forces, and others who support the orchestra\u2019s ethos.<\/p>\n Valentine said there was something special about \u2018having a group of people who\u2019ve all got that kind of shared, traumatic experience of having been exposed to\u00a0so much of life and death \u2026\u00a0There\u2019s a kind of shared understanding in the room \u2026\u00a0people don\u2019t need to talk about it. There\u2019s a safety net there.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> PC Ruiko Asaba, a response and patrol officer with Hampshire Constabulary Police, has played the violin with BLSO since its inception and is a trustee of the ensemble. She described having to repeatedly take charge of a situation as \u2018sticking [out] like a sore thumb\u2019, but \u2018when you play in an orchestra, you have to put your ego aside \u2026\u00a0and I find my place in the world.\u2019<\/p>\n Valentine learnt of music therapy being used with armed services veterans in the US with great success, and is keen for it to be one of the options available to 999 personnel. While he says music therapy is \u2018not the panacea\u2019, he argued that cognitive behavioural therapy, which is commonly offered by the NHS, and campaigns that encourage people to talk about difficult experiences, are not suitable for everyone.<\/p>\n \u2018What we know about traumatic memory and the way it\u2019s processed \u2013 or the way that it gets stuck when it\u2019s not processed that leads to things like PTSD \u2013 is that it hasn\u2019t gone into the bit of the brain yet that allows you to process it into language. Whereas music, art therapy and other things like that get into that bit of the brain where the traumatic memories are stored, and allow you to start processing them in a different way,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n He said if someone in the emergency services is struggling with their mental health, it may be because of \u2018this kind of cumulative, complex PTSD, where you\u2019re dealing with things that are \u2026\u00a0stressful and traumatic all the time.\u2019<\/p>\n Last year Valentine arranged a 12-week pilot project with two small groups of officers from Surrey Police and Sussex Police, with \u00a310,000 funding from the Government\u2019s Coronavirus Community Support Fund.<\/p>\n Music therapist Samantha Thorpe, who ran the pilot project, said those who volunteered to take part in the sessions \u2018had been diagnosed with PTSD in the past, were sort of stable \u2026\u00a0but wanted some additional help; or they were people who were feeling highly anxious in the workplace, who did have sleep disturbances and felt very vulnerable.\u2019<\/p>\n Thorpe, who works with the arts therapy provider Chroma, said physical exercises carried out in a group, such as drumming or clapping, can \u2018build up confidence \u2026\u00a0and take you out of yourself\u2019. The participants also learnt breathing and humming techniques to help regulate feelings of anxiety. Before and after the course, participants completed questionnaires routinely used by healthcare professionals to measure anxiety levels, and the vast majority recorded a decrease.<\/p>\n Thorpe added that participants \u2018definitely felt better that they had tools that they could use, that [the course] had brought new self-awareness that they felt they could transfer out into their daily lives\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section><\/body><\/html>\n By Charlotte Smith Published: Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 12:00 am The UK\u2019s first orchestra created to support the mental health of emergency services personnel is to give its debut concert in central London on Friday 28 October. The Blue Light Symphony Orchestra, comprising members of the police, ambulance and fire services, is to perform […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":20928,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"4"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/uk-orchestra-supporting-the-mental-health-of-emergency-service-workers-gives-debut-concert.png",2194,1274,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/uk-orchestra-supporting-the-mental-health-of-emergency-service-workers-gives-debut-concert-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/uk-orchestra-supporting-the-mental-health-of-emergency-service-workers-gives-debut-concert-300x174.png",300,174,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/uk-orchestra-supporting-the-mental-health-of-emergency-service-workers-gives-debut-concert-768x446.png",768,446,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/uk-orchestra-supporting-the-mental-health-of-emergency-service-workers-gives-debut-concert-1024x595.png",800,465,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/uk-orchestra-supporting-the-mental-health-of-emergency-service-workers-gives-debut-concert-1536x892.png",1536,892,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2022\/10\/uk-orchestra-supporting-the-mental-health-of-emergency-service-workers-gives-debut-concert-2048x1189.png",2048,1189,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Charlotte Smith Published: Thursday, 27 October 2022 at 12:00 am The UK\u2019s first orchestra created to support the mental health of emergency services personnel is to give its debut concert in central London on Friday 28 October. The Blue Light Symphony Orchestra, comprising members of the police, ambulance and fire services, is to perform…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/20927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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