Lifesize: Looking back at our first year of project delivery; Adapting to the Covid 19 pandemic and developing an online delivery model.

In the spring of 2020, we were navigating the rapidly changing scenario of the first national lockdown and restrictions whilst remaining determined to reach our clients and partnership organisation to offer them a service that was of value and relevant in those difficult times.

It was very frustrating at first because a lot of our project work was built on partnerships with organisations and healthcare trusts. Each organisation had to develop its own response to the unfolding pandemic, this put presented a challenge to the way our partnerships could function smoothly as different organisations had different responses to the new set of circumstances.

There was so much to consider when thinking about our work with vulnerable people in our community; the isolation caused by the lockdown, technology, support for people to use tech, adapting safeguarding protocol to ensure new ways of communicating were safe, etc.

As mentioned in a previous blog post we were fortunate to have received funding and training opportunities from both the private and public sector. Our goal was to offer our own unique and well-crafted online service that would be of value to our clients. We developed various strategies for different settings. One of our initial frustrations was the realisation early on that certain communication platforms would be much more flexible than other’s however due to our partnership organisations having differing emerging new protocols it meant in the beginning we were not able to use our preferred platforms.

We needed to be adaptable and have content for our new pilot online programmes that could work well regardless of whether we had these constraints. It was also the case that all of us, facilitators, healthcare professionals, and clients, were getting used to this new reality together and in a way, so it also made sense to begin to trial easy and less tech reliant approaches at first.

The most important thing to us at that time was to be able to offer the vulnerable people we work with a service that would enable them to stay connected during the isolating and strange experience of the first national lockdown. We believe strongly in the power of music and the arts to provide a sense of wellbeing, even in such challenging circumstances. As well as lots of general supportive conversations at the beginning of the pandemic we devised simple activities such as music quizzes and making playlists as a way of getting used to being together in this new online environment.