Gill Phillips @WhoseShoes reflects on a week of gathering ideas and examples around the use of music in storytelling, listening to 'ordinary' people and spreading best practice.
Celebrating 'ordinary' people who are not so ordinary.
Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋
Links mentioned in the podcast to the musical delights showcased:
Cristina Serrão, Lady LXA: lemonade.radio
Paul O'Donnell: The Symphony of Us: Paul O'Donnell on his Coventry collaborators - YouTube
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh: The 12th European Music Therapy Conference: ‘music therapy in progress: please disturb’ (qmu.ac.uk)
We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Apple is easiest to leave a review) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.
Gill Phillips @WhoseShoes reflects on a week of gathering ideas and examples around the use of music in storytelling, listening to 'ordinary' people and spreading best practice.
Celebrating 'ordinary' people who are not so ordinary.
Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋
Links mentioned in the podcast to the musical delights showcased:
Cristina Serrão, Lady LXA: lemonade.radio
Paul O'Donnell: The Symphony of Us: Paul O'Donnell on his Coventry collaborators - YouTube
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh: The 12th European Music Therapy Conference: ‘music therapy in progress: please disturb’ (qmu.ac.uk)
We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Apple is easiest to leave a review) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.
My name is Gill Phillips, and I'm the creator of Whose Shoes, a popular approach to co-production. I was named as an HSJ 100 Wild Card, and want to help give a voice to others talking about their ideas and experiences. I'll be chatting with people from all sorts of different perspectives, walking in their shoes. If you are interested in the future of healthcare, and like to hear what other people think, or perhaps even contribute at some point, Whose Shoes Wild Card is for you. When I first started the podcast series, I had no idea really how it would evolve. My original idea in creating Wild Card Whose Shoes was to hear different voices, find new ways of telling stories, find new stories to tell a bit of creativity, and hopefully inspire people who should be listening, to listen.
So how's it all working out?
I've been reflecting on this a lot over the last week. My head's been a bit crazy with all sorts of thoughts and ideas. Three separate strands I think have been part of my week or, perhaps Monty Python style, it might probably turn out there are more than three. I don't know. We'll see. So last week, Cristina Serrao, told her story on the podcast, episode 21. It's a big story and telling a personal story is always a really courageous thing to do. It feels risky to put stuff out there and share things that are sometimes deeply personal, and perhaps haven't been said before, hoping to support and encourage others who might be going through something similar. And to offer hope. We all need hope. I'm enjoying chatting with all the different guests. And inevitably, the different conversations are resonating with me, and reminding me strongly of different aspects of my own life. My own story if you like. And Christina definitely drew me in to share some of my own personal journey.
I feel inspired to make some more podcasts in the future, perhaps telling the story of Whose Shoes, how it all came about, which is a total blend of professional and personal, the whole me discovering, honing and following up what really matters to me and trying to make a difference. It's been a joy to watch Christina go from some inevitable natural nervousness about how it might be received, to I think a real pride. I think seeing people engage with the podcast and in turn, find resonance in their own stories. And everybody gets that little bit stronger and bolder in the process. We'll connect a little bit more. And this theme of connections and network of networks, and how we can use storytelling to support this, is the main theme of the podcast today. The Symphony of Us is not my name. You'll find out more in a minute. But it's a great name, isn't it?
Christina's podcast coincided with the launch of Lemonade radio, a wonderful new radio station, blending storytelling with music. Aha, we know a bit about that. In the Christmas special I did with Flo episode 15. We talked about how we've used music in lots of different ways in MatExp, maternity experience. And it gives me an excuse I think to share that clip again, that clip from MatExp The Musical on the mainstage of NHS Expo in Manchester because that always makes me smile. So that brings me back to the second thing that happened this week. Or perhaps it's the third if you count Christina's podcast and Lemonade radio as two things. I'm getting confused already. And now you're starting to understand why I'm not a massive fan of counting things that don't necessarily need to be counted.
Anyway. Here's a little conundrum for you. What have a lifelong Coventry City Football supporter, a community pollinator, a bereavement midwife, a primary school teacher, a spiritual minister, and a young woman who was born in Iran and came to Coventry aged two, got in common? More than you think. The Symphony of Us. So what am I talking about? So the second, or whatever thing it is we're up to, thing that happened this week was I dragged long suffering Mr. Whose Shoes off to Coventry Cathedral. Coventry was named as the City of Culture 2021. I think it must have been a bit of a mixed blessing, trying to put on events that pull people together and celebrate the city during a global pandemic. And certainly in normal times, I would have enjoyed getting much more involved.
But there we were, gathered in the cathedral for The Symphony of Us, a masterful musical extravaganza, by Paul O'Donnell, a proud ‘Cov kid’, as he calls himself. Paul describes it as a show that celebrate who we are as people. I can't possibly do justice to this in terms of explaining what happened, how it unfolded, and most importantly, what it felt like to drink it all in. Six ‘ordinary’ in inverted commas, people sharing snippets of their lives, and through spoken word and music, weaving them together in this beautiful tapestry, and actually in the same space as the famous tapestry by Graham Sutherland in Coventry Cathedral. Apparently. It was originally envisaged as six separate monologues. But it didn't work out that way, as connections were inevitably found between people's stories and they simply had to be joined together in a more creative way. Again, huge synergy with what I'm trying to do with the Wild Card Whose Shoes podcast. We found ourselves joining in with a Coventry City football song, ‘Let's Sing Together’. As this coincided almost exactly with the launch of Lemonade radio, for me it was really emotional.
07:07
One more time. For those who are fumbling around for their programs, and didn't quite make it. So here in this wonderful cathedral of ours, in this great city of ours and for the team playing Southampton today in the FA Cup, One nil up at half time. ...
Gill Phillips 08:21
Music and stories evoke memories. I was immediately transported back to 1987, the first and only time that Coventry City have won the FA Cup. At the time I was working for Coventry City Council in Social Services, as it was called then. I was quite heavily pregnant with my second child. The atmosphere locally was electric. And just like the words of the song, the football build up and the eventual victory over Tottenham brought people together. Well, except for me and my brother because he's a lifelong Spurs supporter. But that's not really relevant here. Even people who weren't football fans, who weren't Coventry City fans, came together in the excitement of it all. I remember the open top bus with all the players coming back through Coventry, bringing the cup home. The shops were either closed or deserted. The streets were absolutely rammed with people. And there was excitement and celebration outside the council house. As the bus eventually worked its way through the cheering crowds to bring the players to the Civic reception. I've no idea how that would all work out today. There were people standing on the rooftops, people standing on high, narrow brick walls, people climbing up the lampposts and telegraph poles, everyone trying to get the best vantage spot.
So where was I? Well, I was incredibly lucky. No doubt because of my heavily pregnant state, the Director of Social Services invited me to come… I don't know if it was a party or not. You never know what's a party these days, but there was a band playing. And he invited me to come and watch from his executive office, which had a balcony looking out over the green where it was all happening. I had a perfect view, with my eldest son who was only two at the time. And of course, Mr. Whose Shoe … who didn't at that time know anything about his Whose Shoes destiny. It was wonderful. No need to climb telegraph poles for us. And then the players made their way through the Council offices. I wasn't a Coventry City fan, but everyone was on that day. And it's amazing how events and celebrations like that pull people together in a very special way. So that was just one tiny bit from the Symphony of Us, and what was being relived, especially amongst the older people who were actually there at the time, each with their own unique set of memories.
As the symphony continued, we learned more about these ‘ordinary’ people, their personalities, their passions, what they had each contributed in life, what was important to them, and most interestingly, some of the things that they found that they had in common. Very sadly, two of the mothers had babies who had died, which emphasized the importance of the innovation around introducing bereavement midwives into maternity services. One of the men had grown up as a rainbow child, having had an older brother who died before he was born, and what influence that it had on his life. Everyone taking part had lived in Coventry for many years. But three were born in other countries. And so it went on. Roze, the youngest participant is now seeking to revive Coventr’s twinning links. Coventry is twinned with 26 cities around the world, which ‘in my day’ at the Council were really strong, proud links. So how wonderful to see a young person picking this up and running with it. And to do this Roze was using… you guessed it, music. I'm hoping she will join me one day as a podcast guest to find out more. We're all connected. If you dig a little, if you show curiosity and get to know people.
Unusually very unusually, a classical orchestra was playing in the background, right the way through the performance, the ‘orchestra of the Swan’ they were called, I think it's called interpretive art. And then as a backdrop, the orchestra were playing against the etched floor-to-ceiling glass at the entrance of the cathedral, with the iconic ruins of the old cathedral in the background, and all that they symbolise in terms of war and peace, suffering and recovery. It was late afternoon and the spectacle became more and more beautiful as it started to go dark. And the participants ….protagonists … performers, I don't really know what to call them, were picked out in beautiful purple shafts of light. For me a variation on the lemon light bulb, seeing these people all lit up in purple. Purple for me is the colour of change. And I found it highly significant and inspiring.
So what about the final thing number 3, or 4 or wherever we've got up to. At the end of the week, I was talking to my friend Claire Flower. Claire is a music therapist at Chelsea and Westminster hospital. Our maestro pianist who played #MatExp The musical on the main stage of NHS Expo in Manchester. She who pulled together our alternative version of Deck the halls with boughs of holly, in our Christmas special podcast edition with #MatExp partner in crime, fab Obs Flo, talking about decorating hospital wards at Christmas, Episode 15. If you want to check it out, even though it's not Christmas,. Always one to be creative and innovative. I was excited to hear a little bit about Claire's new job as a consultant, AHP, allied health professional, more of that anon. I think it's really interesting and exciting. And I'm hoping to speak to Claire at some point on a future podcast. But in particular, relevant to here,.
Claire was telling me about the 12th European music therapy conference that's happening in Edinburgh in June, where of course music will be celebrated. Claire knew this would interest me. In fact, she said it's got a Gill Phillips feel to it, which made me laugh. The conference title is ‘music therapy in progress. Please disturb’. Its aim is, and I quote, “to create a playful yet rigorous space where we can shoogle and be shoogled ” My mum who's Scottish by background used to use the word shoogling and I hadn't heard it for a while. I'll post a link to the conference in the programme notes as it looks wonderfully innovative and exciting. I just love the idea of formal events - this one is being held at the Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh - using more disruptive means to help people explore new ideas from real challenges. Positive movements such as Black Lives Matter and ‘Me too’ are mentioned, and the challenges posed by the COVID 19 pandemic, you can see influencing the spirit of the conference. It just seems to me throughout the history of mankind, creative arts have been used to tell stories, to make sense of our experiences, and to push and challenge and try and improve lives. So it's wonderful to see this tradition continued and in itself pushed a bit further.
So I think my lemon lightbulb moments are just jumping out at me for this episode. In one part of my life, I'm collecting more and more lived experience stories, and stories by just people who are passionate about improving healthcare, improving people's lives and well being. And it's obvious how much richness they have. In another part of my life, I hear apparent interest from the ‘powers that be’ in learning from ‘ lived experience’. So Eureka, I think well, why don't you listen to the podcast? Now, obviously, to be fair, many people are but not nearly enough. How about including some of them, or relevant clips from them, in clinical education? How about bypassing that bit where experienced clinicians say and often, with deep regret, oh, I never realized that you felt like that? Or that my words were received like that, when they hear real patient stories, people's stories?
Why do people have to keep repeating these painful stories, sending the same messages. So thank you to all the wild cards, the ‘please disturb’ people, the pirates and the shooglers. Here's to building a social movement of finding out what really matters to people in the most holistic sense, and truly listening. I absolutely love the title, ‘the symphony of us’. I absolutely love the idea of celebrating ordinary people who are not so ordinary. I guess my Wild Card Podcast Series is a symphony of us. I have some wonderful new people lined up to share their stories, their challenges, their ideas. Let's listen. Let's disturb and shoogle. And let's all sing together.
I hope you have enjoyed this episode. If so, please subscribe now to hear more of these fascinating conversations on your favorite podcast platform. And please leave a review. I tweet us Whose Shoes thank you for being on this journey with me. And let's hope that together we can make a difference.