Children & Young People
Culture Cafe Makes Music
This article reflects on Culture Café Makes Music our project with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the care of Derbyshire County Council
Since 2021, we have worked closely with Derbyshire County Council Virtual School, Orchestras Live and Learning Through Arts to develop Culture Café Makes Music. This unique project works with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the care of Derbyshire County Council, providing them with the chance to express themselves through music and movement.
“I see now my dream – to be a musician”
–Participant
In 2022, a weekend of creative expression and musical exploration involved 21 young people from Albania, Sudan, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iran and Chad. These participants worked with dance artist Debi Hedderwick, Sinfonia Viva team Raph Clarkson, Raghad Haddad and Dave Ayre, alongside creative mentors and Derbyshire Virtual School staff.
Each day began with a wellbeing wake up movement session accompanied by live music. This session was designed to encourage connection between the group members and team, allowing people to express themselves more freely throughout the day and to prepare for the sessions which would follow.
“I enjoyed the viola and double bass – I don’t know many times when I’ve had the chance to listen in my life, you know. I’m so happy for that.”
–Participant
Across the weekend, there were a wide range of activities including
- Movement games using elastics, light balls and lots of creativity
- Singing
- Walking up to the Star Disc to take inspiration from the constellations and the sky
- Creating new songs
- Listening to the Sinfonia Viva team share music
- Playing together as a band
- Cooking and eating together
- Sharing languages
There were some beautiful moments of connection and one of the clearest of these was during a hello song, where members of the group offered up their own language to be added to the hello song. These included Albanian, Sudanese Arabic, Tigrinya, Amharic, Pashto and Dari, Vietnamese, Kurdish Sorani and Chad Arabic.
Two of the young people shared a Kurdish song which they loved to play. The whole group then worked together to create a new arrangement of this piece, which was shared with carers in a very informal sharing at the end of the weekend.
Culture Café Makes Music continued in 2024. The culmination event took place at Deda in February – we sang, danced, played, shared language and food together and had an incredible time. During the project in 2024 we worked with 30 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. They have expressed themselves through music, words and movement and we were thrilled to bring them together with an ensemble from the orchestra
