This project, supported by the Leverhulme Trust through the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants Scheme, seeks to expand, and build evidence and policy for, the important role music practices can play in the first stages of life.
Musical care practices play an important and expanding role throughout the life course, and have particular value at the beginning of life. These can include parent and baby groups, music therapy in neonatal intensive care units, and much more. While there is now a substantial evidence base for some of this work, availability of musical care is not equally distributed around the UK or across the various stages of the beginning of life. Activities are not always available to those who might benefit from them and there remain barriers to participation.
This research project explores the experience of, and barriers to, musical care during the beginning of life in the UK with the goal of informing processes and policies for spreading and embedding musical care during the beginning of life more widely the UK.
