Day 2…

On Tuesday we learnt a surprising fact: Osaka and Manchester have had a connection for over 100 years, as Osaka used to be called ‘Manchester of the East’ because of its cotton industry. Both cities have a large network of canals that were used to transport products inland from the coast and Osaka used to have 808 bridges over these canals. The word ‘bashi’, which means bridge, is used as a name for a shopping area in the middle of the city.

Despite it only being our second training session, we feel a connection with the musicians from Japan Century Orchestra and Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra. There are a lot of differences in our approaches to community programmes, but all of the musicians are extremely musical and emotionally intelligent. Our colleague Takuma, who is the Manager of Japan Century Orchestra’s community programme, is the first person to work with a composer on orchestral community projects, and his enthusiasm and open-minded approach is evident in his willingness to engage his musicians in training sessions with us and pioneer new ideas in Osaka.

There was a big shift in the musician’s development in the afternoon of the second day. We had begun the afternoon by talking to them about our Tameside Opera project, in which a man with dementia who was non-verbal had used his hobby, Tai Chi, as a way of moving to the music we had been playing. Amina had emulated the shape, speed and height of his movements on her flute and created new melodies. To some musicians this activity might seem quite daunting, but the Japanese musicians understood the idea straight away and begun to move and improvise in pairs. By the end of the session we had created a series of melodies and used some of them to form a song which would be part of our care home sessions later this week.

It is interesting speaking to the musicians and Takuma about the role of music in Health and Social Care in the UK and in Japan. At Camerata we have conducted evaluations to measure the impact of our projects with regards to improving the quality of life of the participants, and this is something that the British Council will be doing after this week’s project with Professor Naoko Kusaka who is a Clinical Psychiatrist from Doshisha Women’s University. There is also a lot that we want to find about how dementia presents itself in Japan compared to the UK, and we will have a clearer picture after the care home workshops and in the forum event at the Association for Toyonaka Multicultural Symbiosis on Saturday. I think there will be a lot that we can take back to the UK about how the elderly are cared for in Japan, and we will continue to share our developments with our Japanese colleagues regarding Arts and Health and Social Care.

Lucy Geddes, Camerata in the Community Manager