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Funding Round

Carers’ Music Fund

Various
Grantholders

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

Project information

£1.9 Million

Grant amount

August 2019

Date awarded

August 2019 – June 2021

Project duration

UK-wide

Location

In partnership with:
DCMS
Download the Carers Music Fund Evaluation Download the Carers Music Fund What Works Centre for Wellbeing Briefing

Project Detail

Project summary

The Carers’ Music Fund was a trailblazing two-year programme exploring how regular, social music-making for female carers could help improve their wellbeing.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport awarded Spirit of 2012 £1.5m through the Tampon Tax Fund which 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 ringfenced a further £400,000 for access costs and alternative provision for participants’ loved ones.

Whilst campaign groups such as Carers UK and The Carers Trust have long highlighted the challenges unpaid carers experience in having time for themselves, we found limited examples of funded programmes that explicitly took a test and learn approach to removing barriers to their participation in arts and culture. Spirit of 2012 had previously funded high-quality projects supporting carers and their loved-ones to participate in activities together – this project was different for us in exploring both the value and the practicalities of funded projects just for the carers themselves.

Alongside ten diverse grants, a mix of music and carers organisations, the project was underpinned by an innovative learning partnership made up of The What Works Centre for Wellbeing, Carers UK, The Behavioural Insights Team and Apteligen. This had the dual aim of explicitly supporting grantees to use insights from wellbeing research and feeding that research back into wider policy and practice.

The ten projects were:

  • Sound Creators (UK Youth, £234,996): ran music sessions like DJ-ing and choir singing with young female carers in youth clubs in places such as Wigan, Birmingham, Bolton.
  • Sound Out (Jack Drum Arts, £149,251): brought together female carers in County Durham, including recently resettled Syrian mother, for songwriting, community singing, and samba drumming to help them build confidence and connect with others.
  • Women’s Work (Oh Yeah Music Centre, £59,800): Working in Belfast, this project offered music sessions for female carers in a variety of circumstances, including those looking after older family members with a dementia, recently settled Syrian families, and mothers with an interest in the music industry who had put their careers on hold to care for others.
  • Tàlaidhean Ùra [New Lullabies] (Feis Rois, £59,998): brought mothers of new babies in rural Inverness together to share experiences and create their own lullabies, inspired by folk music from around the world.
  • Monster Extraction (My Pockets, £156,651): worked with female carers in Hull and East Yorkshire to write music that gave voice to the struggles and “monsters” they face in their daily lives.
  • Noise Solution (Beat Syndicate, £227,271.50): offered young carers in Suffolk one-to-one music mentoring and group music-making sessions, using digital tools.
  • Project Alaw (Barnardo’s, £55,618): ran music workshops for girls and young women in caring roles in Merthyr Tydfil, helping them connect with others in similar situations.
  • MyMusic (Northamptonshire Carers, £210,202): provided music-making opportunities for a wide mix of carers — older carers already in choirs, young carers aged 7–17, mother-daughter carers, and women caring for loved ones with dementia.
  • Hidden Voices (Midlands Arts Centre, £219,999): offered music activities for women caring for people with autism, older female carers, and women from the Chinese Community Centre
  • Bang The Drum (Blackpool Carers, £238,864): worked with the Grand Theatre in Blackpool to give female carers of all ages respite through creative expression and music-making.

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

I really enjoyed the session, I’ve been looking forward to it all week, I really enjoy carving this time out for myself.

Carers’ Music Fund participant

I can’t emphasise enough that these sessions have been a real lifeline for me.

Carers’ Music Fund participant

Impact & Learning

Key achievements

  • Reaching the right people: The projects recruited 925 female carers, whose average wellbeing level was well below the UK National Average (life satisfaction of 6.3 compared to 7.3 average in Feb 2020). 42% were giving over 90 hours of care a week, while 25% were less than 20 hours a week. 35% of the carers identified as disabled themselves, 40% were from households with an income of less than £15,000. 54% had never accessed support as a carer before, 50% had never taken part in music before.
  • Wellbeing impacts: Projects used the ONS4 subjective wellbeing scale to measure impacts. Across the four cohorts, life satisfaction increased from 6.3/10 to 7.2, feeling that life was worthwhile moved from 6.7 to 7.4, happiness from 6.1 to 6.9 and feelings of anxiety decreased from 5.4 to 4.8. Increases were largest in the pre-COVID cohort (for example life satisfaction went up by 1.4 points on the ten-point scale in the pre-COVID group, and 0.7 points in the post COVID groups). However, given that in the overall population experiencing a decline in wellbeing during COVID, this 0.7 increase could represent a bigger change.
  • Social connection impacts: There were reductions in the number of participants who felt lonely often or always (13% >> 9%) and some of the time (36% >> 30%). Matched analysis showed a mixed picture with 34% of the group experiencing improvements in levels of loneliness, 21% seeing it decrease and 45% stayed the same. We are not able to attribute these changes to the project, although 4 out of 5 participants agreed that being involved in the Carers’ Music Fund had helped them to make new friends. Qualitative evidence supports this: ‘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
  • Other benefits: Participants also described increases in confidence, and capability – with potential effects on how they then delivered their caring role. feel more confident in my role as a carer, and as a person. My daughter also notices the difference, so that’s something positive that she can take from it as well. It’s definitely changed my outlook, especially from meeting the different people in the group. I just feel more positive, and more capable.’

 

Key learning

  • Apteligen identified a wide range of ingredients that helped music making projects have an impact on wellbeing. These are set out below.

  • Link workers, GP surgeries and other statutory support organisations should be proactively signposting carers to leisure and social activities that they can access themselves, as well as pointing carers to activities for their loved ones. We found that some carers needed ‘permission’ and encouragement to do something for themselves. Session leaders created an environment that validated carers’ need for social activities as part of self-care.
  • For music providers, reaching the carers was the most challenging aspect of the project. As one grantee explained: ‘We have learnt that we need to be inventive about finding participants and partners to work with and we need to think of lots of organisations to approach because many of them don’t get back to us. All of our successful groups have come through connections and recommendations from other organisations we know.’
  • Ringfenced funding for alternative provision was welcomed, but not fully spent across the cohorts. In part this was due to COVID-19 – some grantees had planned parallel activities or care for carers at the same venue which were no longer needed (or permissible). When sessions shifted online, it was easier for carers to attend the sessions without needing to source support, although this did mean that we were no longer testing the idea of providing opportunities to fully step away from caring role to take part.
  • One of our theories was that this project would be most effective if it could reach women and girls who had just taken on a carer role – or were transitioning to seeing themselves as a carer. Some research suggests it is at transition points where wellbeing dips and people might need most support. However, our projects did not really reach this group: we found that only 6% of carers had been in the role less than a year. We don’t know if the wellbeing impacts would have been more profound if we could reach people at an earlier stage in their caring journey through different recruitment channels – or whether new carers would not feel ready to take on a new commitment for themselves whilst adjusting to caring.

Media library

The Carers Music Fund – a summary
Final Report_ Evaluation of the Carers’ Music Fund – Spirit of 2012
Carers Music Fund-Insight-report1-Nov-2020
WWCW-Carers Music Fund-briefing2021-06-23
Carers-UK-reflections-on-the-Carers-Music-Fund
Music and wellbeing-report Accessible
Creative-pathways-to-wellbeing-a-synthesis-of-project-case-studies-2024

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