Last week, the Sing My Own Song project came to an end after 15 weeks of online and in person sessions.

Our Marketing and Communications Assistant, Zoe, was able to attend the final in person session at Hargrave House, in accordance with COVID-19 guidance. She shares how the group of eight 11-17 year olds collaborated to write a powerful song:

As I arrived, I was greeted by Fiona, the Music and Play Therapist running the sessions, and Sophie and Gregory, the two singer-songwriter volunteers supporting her. There was an excited energy in the room as the young people were eager to finish up their collaborative creation in the last two hours they would share as a group.

The first few lines of lyrics that the group had already written were up on a white board:

“When you’ve had it and you’ve lost it,

There’s no way out,

You know you’re sitting in the eye of danger,

And you have been for a while.

When the pressure of expectation,

Has got you feeling down,

When the strength you’ve known leaves you,

You’ve forgotten how to smile.”

These lines blew me away with their depth and feeling. I asked Fiona how the group came up with the concept:

“In one of our earlier sessions, I asked the young people to come up with a character profile of an imaginary person. Each of them came up with some fantastic ideas and we decided to use one of them as the basis for our group song. We span a pencil on a piece of paper with each character on it and it landed on the character of ‘James’ written by one of our youngest participants.”

The group started to tell me more about this character of “James”: he was a young man with green eyes and brown hair, he was studious and good at school but was being pressured by his friends to become a person he was not, which was causing him anxiety.

It amazed me that whilst one of the young people came up with the concept on their own, everyone in the group could relate to the character’s experience and write such heartfelt lyrics.

The group got to work on the rest of the song, one young woman came up with lyrics, whilst another, who was slightly nervous to share her thoughts, hummed a melody under her breath.

Sophie heard the tune and encouraged the participant to share with the group, who then decided to use the melody for the chorus.

The last part of the song came together in half an hour:

“Let me slip away,

Take another name,

Board a boat or train,

And get out of here.

I’ve got no life or soul,

My heart has turned to coal,

In search of ‘I don’t know’,

To get me out of here.”

Two participants expressed themselves through a different medium, creating some cover art for the song. One drew the face of “James” with one side of his face happy and outgoing and one side sad and confused, capturing the sentiment of the song.

As the session came to an end, Fiona spoke to the group about the importance of an “ending”:

“Sometimes we don’t get a chance to end things properly, which can be really difficult for us to process. So, when we get a chance to celebrate properly, like this, we should.”

Participants all received a certificate and a round of applause from the rest of the group for taking part, working on their song writing skills and building their confidence.