Lullaby Project featured on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour

BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour today includes a feature on our Lullaby Project, run in collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Resound, with migrant and refugee mothers from Praxis Community Projects WINGS group.

The Lullaby Project is a national programme of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute in the US, brought to the UK for the first time by the Irene Taylor Trust.

It will be available to listen to here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08xxdh5

Our experienced project team Sara Lee and Rob Willson and musicians from the RPO worked with the mothers to craft original lullabies written especially for their young children. Our project leader Nick Hayes then orchestrated the lullabies for an ensemble of RPO players, to be recorded for a CD album as well as shared informally.

After the first live sharing, Sara Lee wrote; “I’ve never minded getting up in the morning as I love my job. Today was particularly special as I spent it with a wonderful group of refugee and migrant mothers and some fabulous musicians. Over the past couple of weeks we have been helping the mums write lullabies for their children and today we recorded and performed them. They were, to a woman, excited, emotional, resolute, and hugely impressive. Many of their children, aged 3 months and up, heard their mums sing to them and will now have these songs for ever.”

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The Lullaby Project is supported by Arts Council England, the Lucille Graham Trust and the Swan Mountain Foundation.