Music Street was created to advance the arts, culture, heritage and science by organising and promoting the arts for the benefit of local community.
Music Street promotes social inclusion of people with mental health issues by preventing them from becoming socially excluded, relieving the needs of those people who are socially excluded and assisting them to integrate into society.
Music Street was formed in 2012 as a voluntary collective of music and arts enthusiasts in conjunction with people with mental health issues.
Having first hand knowledge of the curative benefits of music, and suffering mental health issues myself – along with other members of our group – we knew we had something to offer people and so it proved.
In 2012 we began hosting epic local events bringing together local artists and catering for a wide selection of tastes. It was at this gig that we raised enough money to put a deposit on a rehearsal studio and teaching facility
We still run the same studio space today, and have catered for dozens of local artists and our mental health groups
We then decided to go one further and organize bigger events in local parks, which had meant we had to liaise with the Rochdale Council, Heywood Township and the local police and we arranged three park events in one calendar year. We made programmes, compilation albums, and live streamed the events.
Music Street & Monkey Business
| Monkey Business Friends, families, musicians and even monkeys were out in full force for music festival Monkey Business Two at Queens…www.rochdaleonline.co.uk |
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/gallery/pictures-monkey-business-music-festival-7780569
Made in Rochdale Facebook Group
In 2013 we set up the online Facebook group Made In Rochdale, a local arts platform for people to share their music gig news, films and handicrafts, and it’s still going strong after 10 years with hundreds of members.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/545548602179754/?locale=en_GB
Music Street & Deeply Dale
We also ran a popular music festival for 2 years in the spirit of the famous Deeply Dale concerts of the 1970s
| Deeply Dale People’s Music Festival The spirit of Rochdale was out in full bloom on Syke Common this Sunday (24 August) at Deeply Dale People’s Music…www.rochdaleonline.co.uk |
Weekly Jams
We ran weekly jam nights and various concerts at The Ukrainian Club and The Labour Club Rochdale from 2013 to 2018
Music Street & Recovery Republic Heywood
In 2014 we began a very fruitful partnership with Recovery Republic in Heywood prescribing music sessions to people mental health issues.
We have collaborated together on many successful projects and have seen our groups play festivals, gig nights, special events. We were also invited to play for Rochdale Council, and at mental health seminars.
Musical Routes to Wellbeing
In 2017, in partnership with Recovery Republic we collectively and successfully applied for grants from the CCG and launched our Musical Routes To Wellbeing project which saw us expand; providing music sessions in both Heywood and Rochdale. Recovery Republic hosted a Rochdale Training OCR level teacher training course and we became qualified teachers.
We had five teachers working with approximately 30 service users, we also monitored the benefits of the music sessions using wemwbs https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/med/research/platform/wemwbs/ every month which turned out some very positive results.
The sessions were brilliant with people travelling near and far to attend, get involved and contribute and then covid happened. Unfortunately we had to shut down sessions for 2 years and soon after, our best collaborator and champion, Carl Cruise of Recovery Republic sadly passed way.
Musical Routes To Wellbeing with Recovery Republic is still going strong in Heywood, and we run voluntary and client led song writing sessions in Rochdale, one of our best budding songwriters who attends is 80 years young.
| Anniversary of Recovery Republic Hundreds of residents turned out in the sunshine on Saturday 26 July to celebrate the second anniversary of Recovery…www.rochdaleonline.co.uk |
Darnhill Festival
In 2014, we were invited to meet with Cartwheel Arts who had heard about our ‘Monkey Business’ park festivals and asked us to curate, stage manage, DJ and compere the Darnhill Festival, and it’s been our pleasure for almost ten years to do just that, and we are always looking forward to the next one.
https://www.cartwheelarts.org.uk/article/darnhill-festival-2023https://www.cartwheelarts.org.uk/article/darnhill-festival-2023
https://www.cartwheelarts.org.uk/view-our-projects/current-projects/darnhill-festival
All of these events and others can be viewed here, filmed by Claire May Minett our resident filmmaker.