An Introduction to ENCORE

We’ve been fairly absent from the blog for a while now, so please let me take a moment to introduce ENCORE to you.

ENCORE is an eight-week music-based therapeutic music programme for children and young people from year 4 up to year 11. The programme is aimed at those with mild anxiety, low self-esteem or low confidence and is for up to six children per school group. During the programme we discuss topics such as understanding the “worry cycle”, which is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and looks at how our thoughts, early signs in our body, emotions and actions are linked together. Once the young people can understand the link between them, we can then help them to break down the cycle by challenging their thoughts or actions. We share with the children some strategies they might find helpful to implement when they become aware of their anxiety and focus on the use of music as a tool to encourage positive mental health.

At ENCORE we believe that music is a powerful instrument for change and therefore we invest time in teaching the young people how to play new instruments and hone skills they have already learnt, either through music lessons or self-taught. We recognise that learning to play an instrument can increase self-esteem because it gives us a sense of accomplishment. Where loneliness is at an all-time high within our young people, partly due to the lack of face-to-face social interaction through social media and online gaming, playing music with other people can give us a community and a sense of purpose. 

In our first session the children write down goals they would like to achieve, both to do with their confidence, self-esteem and anxiety and also musically. We ask them to write down who they think would be proud and happy for them if they achieved these goals. In our final group session we offer the children the opportunity to perform to peers and teachers (and on occasions family members too) and we get to see increased self-esteem and from those people they identified that might be proud and happy for them we so often see just that. Pride from their peers, teachers, family and also themselves (someone they rarely consider might be proud if their goal was achieved).

Over the next few months we will share more of our journey and learnings with you including case studies from some of the children we have worked with and some of the ways we’ve used music in the groups, so do keep an eye out  for them.