Hockley Skills Development Centre

We have seen citizens of our service interact with others and with the world around them, due to the power of music therapy.

Hockley Skills Development Centre

Hockley Skills Development Centre is a day centre. Birmingham City Council run the centre, which supports nearly 100 people with a range of learning and physical disabilities.

Our partnership began in 2021. Music therapy offers clients a space to express themselves and interact with others.

You can see those people who can’t use words to communicate, and who have very complex needs, really engage with music. They express themselves so much through music and the interactions that come with it.

At Hockley Skills Development Centre, we work with people with a variety of needs and life circumstances.

One client with behavioural needs does not communicate verbally. However, in a music therapy session, he interacted with our music therapist through singing and drumming. Despite rarely engaging with others for extended amounts of time in any other circumstances, he sang back and forth with her for over five minutes – a particularly powerful experience.

Another client has a mild learning disability and experiences anxiety and depression. Music gave her the space for expression, as she both wrote and performed a song about her late father.

The team at Hockley Skills Development Centre speak of the power of music therapy to help their clients as they gain the confidence to engage in and experience joy from music.

We produced this story in partnership with Hockley Skills Development Centre.