Imagine the ideal village – and then imagine an evening in late autumn in the village hall and the ideal community event. A social.
There’d be food and drink of course, and music, lively conversation, playfulness and a warm glow over the entire proceedings. Add a little intellectual bite and some common purpose and you get a sense of this special evening for staff and students of FNSNM.
Friday 19th November, 7.30 to 11.00 pm – featuring THE NIGHTINGALE CHOIR and films by EMMA LAZENBY
The idea is to create a warm, atmospheric, social space with a bring-your-own bar and to enjoy an evening of music (both listening and participating), film, poetry, art and the exploration of a topic related to nursing in the broadest sense: compassion. A little like an eighteenth century literary salon but more like the chill-out space at a festival, the ground floor of the JCM building will be transformed for the evening with lamps and cushions.
If you have any ideas for this event or would like to contribute in any way (perform something, bake a particularly fine biscuit etc) then please let me know. I’m also looking for lamps and cushions to borrow for the evening. I’m hoping this will become a series of events so any unwanted lamps and cushions will be gratefully received.
You can email me at john.browne@kcl.ac.uk or post a comment below.
See the Programme here
Songbook For Children’s Nurses
The idea is to create a collection of songs to be used as a tool in children’s nursing.
Songs that soothe, distract, explain, reassure etc. Also to develop the nurses’ skills in both singing these songs and in creating their own. The aim is to leave a legacy of songs in various forms (book, CD, maybe some video) and ideally a singing module on the children’s nursing course.
PROPOSED CONTENT
Songs For Specific Situations
Silly Songs For Distracting
Soothing Songs
Speaking Songs
How To Sing These Songs
How To Invent Your Own Songs
Songs In Other Languages
Rhythm Games
RESPONSES FROM NURSES SO FAR
The Idea
All the children’s nurses I’ve spoken to so far agree that there should be singing on children’s wards and that this songbook is a good idea.
Self-consciousness
Nurses suggested the biggest issue for them would be shyness/ confidence or rather feeling self-conscious. If they thought no other staff were around it would be fine to sing to children but some nurses would feel embarrassed singing with colleagues in earshot. If there was a culture of singing in children’s wards this would be different.
The song book should try and address these issues.
Situations – Initial suggestions
- When child is about to go to theatre a song to explain the process
- When measuring vital signs song to explain red light is safe
- When fluids are being released through a cannula
- Especially useful in A+E
- Moving after surgery
Portability
The book should be small enough to fit into a nurses pocket and could perhaps be on a ring-binder so that individual songs could be taken out. It could be accompanied by a CD with MP3’s, MPEG’s and PDF’s so that nurses can print off individual songs, learn songs on ipods, watch videos of rhythm games etc.
If you have any further suggestions then please leave a comment below or email me at john.browne@kcl.ac.uk
Reflection On Residency
The first and most important feature of the residency for me was how thematically rich the context was. I found these themes always moving and a constant source of inspiration throughout my time at the school.
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There was a pretty thorough description of what was expected of the CIR at the time of application but I realised once in the role that this was a much more open brief than I had anticipated. This was an exciting challenge for me. It allowed my imagination to fly and forced me to take much greater responsibility for the full range of issues related to creating a piece of music than I normally would: from sourcing texts in a very multi-faceted way, teasing out possible venues, considering the relationship between performers and audience etc and the broader conceptual aspects of how a work is presented and experienced. At times it seemed to me that I was examining the values around music almost from first principles and I was very stimulated by this.
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I’ve long been keen to compose music that is accessible to a wide audience, and equally keen that the music I compose is no less rich for that. The residency was an ideal context for me to explore these principles further.
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There were several moments throughout the residency when I was asked to compose music for religious ceremonies. These ceremonies were specifically Christian and this posed many challenges for me as a non-Christian. I had never composed anything specifically “spiritual” but with a deep and very personal interest in spirituality (that is not faith-aligned) I relished these challenges. First of all finding appropriate texts that were respectful and sympathetic to that tradition, that were sufficiently universal without being too generalised and were true to me was very time-consuming but also very rewarding. Finding the right tone, the right style was the real effort and the core compositional challenge of the residency. All the music I composed across the two years was colored by this exploration.
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It was a joy to have the opportunity of composing for a very wide range of musical forces from Gamelan to Orchestra, professionals and non-professionals, and from community choirs to a Rolls Royce of a choir like the choir of Westminster Abbey.
The Year So Far: Phase 1
Phase one was an effort to get a handle on a many-tentacled beast – a bewildering network of separate but related organisations all with their own structures, raison d’etres, buildings etc
I’ve been appointed composer-in-residence in the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery so my very first challenge is to find a way of saying that succinctly (what a mouthful!). So its the FNSNM and I’m the CIR and in my first few weeks I set about trying to absorb the context.
The nursing school sits inside Kings College London but feels quite separate, quite independent. This is partly to do with the way that Kings is spread over a number of sites and so the school is physically very separate. It’s also seems to be related more generally to the status of nursing within academia but mostly to do with the nature of the training – much of which is done in partner hospitals scattered across south London. In truth the school feels more like it’s in the University of the NHS rather than KCL.
There were of course a range of practicalities to deal with: setting up an office, bringing in instruments, decorating it (lamps and cushions!), an email account, computer etc and then various, building tours, security passes and so on. The idea of having an office smack in the middle on London, actually right on Waterloo roundabout takes a little getting used to – particularly strange because this is neither an arts organisation nor does it feel like a university – its an office building – and that’s a very different environment for me.
I throw myself in pretty quickly by leading a number of music exercises and teaching some songs to all the new first year students at their induction day event and then again for the new masters students. This gives me a very good idea of the community within which I’ve been placed – at least the student dimension – and its very heartening – smart, empathetic young people with a better balance of male/female than I’d anticipated – and willing to be involved.
The following weeks are taken up with meeting key staff, research visits to wards in St Thomas’s and Guy’s hospitals, attending nursing skills training, getting involved in the Nightingale choir and beginning to tease out ideas for the residency. I set up a series of creative music-making workshop at the Southbank Centre to which all staff and students are invited. These go well but numbers are low and I begin to realise that this is a particular challenge of the residency: when students and staff schedules are so full and they are spread so wide how can I fulfill that aspect of the brief which is about engaging this community?
john browne 