Growing Minds

Growing Minds was first established in the spring of 2007. South Somerset Mind secured the funding from a charitable trust for a three year project aimed at engaging with people with mental health problems through music.

The idea was to reach out to people in secure units, as well as service users at Mind’s own drop-in facility in Yeovil, and give them the opportunity to listen to, or become involved in making music of their own. This it was felt would be therapeutic, and an aid to recovery from mental health problems.

All the musicians involved were volunteers, and all had their own experiences of mental health issues.

By the early part of 2008 some of the volunteers had had to withdraw for personal reasons, and only two (Paul Belmonte and Chris Brabyn) remained. In order for the project to move forward Paul Chousmer was brought in as project co-ordinator, and two new musicians (Maddy Ralls and Alistair Blackmore) were added to the line-up. Paul C’s life long experience in the music industry has since taken the project into new territory, though its central aims remain the same, and the work is on-going. It was he who identified the creative potential of the individuals involved, and encouraged the move away from other people’s music. It was he who encouraged the band’s members to draw on their own experiences to write their own songs which, we hope, makes the music more relevant to the project and to the people it seeks to help.

By the late summer a fifth member (Craig Cox) had joined the line-up, and the band had so much original material at its disposal that they were looking for a wider audience and an opportunity to promote mental health issues and speak out against the widespread discrimination and stigma that seems to attach itself to the millions of people who suffer some kind of mental health problem at some time in their lives. The funding allocated to us by Open Up has indeed opened up that opportunity.