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Funding round

Carers’ Music Fund

This project is now complete

Providing opportunities for creative expression through music making for women and girls with caring responsibilities.

The project in numbers

£1.9 Million

Project spend

August 2019 – June 2021

Project duration

Various

Grantee organisation

Most carers in the UK are women, and women make up 72% of those in receipt of the Carers Living Allowance. The Carers’ Music Fund put women and girls with caring responsibilities front and centre, providing opportunities for fun, creative expression and self (re)-discovery through music making.

The Carers’ Music Fund was made possible by funding that Spirit of 2012 received from the Tampon Tax Fund, awarded through the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The Tampon Tax Fund was set up to allocate the money generated from the VAT on sanitary products to projects that improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls. Spirit was awarded £1.5 million from the fund in March 2019. Spirit topped up the funding with an additional £400,000 to create an access pot to fund activities that support the people being ‘cared for’ (of any gender) and provide flexible ways of breaking down barriers to engagement.

This included paying for alternative care or funding taxis so that carers spend less time travelling to and from sessions. Spirit’s access pot aimed to increase the accessibility of the projects by providing person-centred support that was flexible to participants’ circumstances.

View the projects

Women and girls

MyMusic

England Wellingborough
Women and girls

Sound Out

County Durham England

Project aims

  1. Give female carers the opportunity for creative expression through music-making.
  2. Examine the effect of participatory music projects on the wellbeing of carers.

Impact

I was feeling very isolated because of the COVID situation. Lots of people want to help you, but you don’t always know what to say to them. It’s hard to ask for the right sort of help. But the music sessions were just what I needed.

Carers’ Music Fund participant

13%

Average happiness increase amongst those who participated in Carers’ Music Fund

925

Participants

13%

Average life satisfaction increase

10%

Average increase in feeling worthwhile

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