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#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek - Let's Connect

An image of a RPO Resound session with a male violinist and male trombonist with 2 members in the session all sitting down

The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (9 -15 May) is Loneliness. People are being encouraged to build meaningful connections with their friends, family and communities.

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s Community and Education team, RPO Resound, have been running a new mental health project in Brent with the support of The Baring Foundation during 2022. The project aims to work with adults and adolescents who are engaging with mental health services, especially those from diverse ethnic backgrounds who may not have engaged with creative wellbeing. support in the past.’

This year's Mental Health Awareness Week the project begins workshops at the secure Kingswood Centre in Brent. RPO musicians will work alongside service users to develop music that they will perform at the end of six weeks of workshops.

At the end of this week, the project has its latest monthly drop in session for adults in the Brent community who are engaged with mental health services. This month musicians and participants will use the theme from mental health awareness week - ‘connections’ - to develop new pieces of music within the workshops.

A third strand to this project will begin 23 May in Wembley Stadium with adolescents who may be at risk of exclusion due to mental health related challenges. They will be working fortnightly to develop a new piece of music to perform in July.

If you are interested to learn any more about these workshops please contact the RPO community and education team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Watch: Great Traditions with Ustad Wajahat Khan

An image showing Wajahat Khan playing a sarod string instrument, to the left are a female violinst wearing a black dress and a male cellist wearing a suit holding his cello upright

Explore a unique fusion of Western and Indian traditions of music with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and legendary maestro of the sarod and composer, Ustad Wajahat Khan.

An orchestra plays on a wooden panelled stage, with a large screen above them showing a yellow background and a stick-like human figure

Tuesday 29 March 2022 marked the culmination of ‘Express Yourself’, the 2022 edition of the Wandsworth Special Schools project developed by long-time partners Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Wandsworth Music.

An image showing the Royal Albert Hall's auditorium, with a huge Organ behind the stage, an orchestra in front of it, and a flat stage for ballet dancing in front of the Orchestra.

For the past five years, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has taken time to understand people’s relationship with music – both avid music lovers as well as tomorrow’s potential audience for orchestral music – and to understand where the orchestral world fits in with their lives.

In 2020, when the world was in lockdown, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s report explored how audiences engaged with music when forced into new and unfamiliar ways of living. This report explores how these ways of living were embraced for the longer term.

We explore the power of music during COVID-19 restrictions, the return to the concert hall and challenges the industry faced during this time. We also look at inclusivity among audiences for orchestral music, examining different audiences’ views on classical music and how change might come about.

To download and read the full report follow the button below.

Download and view report

View previous reports