Before we became Decoda we were Count Me In, taking musicians into local day centres and homes. Count Me In was born one evening in a pub in Hastings. Everyone in the pub was watching Rag Mama Rag, the acoustic blues duo but I was watching Dave,(not his real name) at a table next to the musicians.

I knew Dave through work, a young man with learning disabilities who could present a challenge if not understood. There he was grinning and clapping with sheer delight and I was wondering – Why don’t more people with learning disabilities get to hear good, live music? The rest, as they say, is history…………

I was reminded of this today when I was sent information from the Stay Up Late campaign organised by Heavy Load. What struck me that night in the Hastings Arms was not just how much Dave was loving the music – it was also the fact that he was there at all, not for the whole evening but certainly until after the break at 10. Because of shift patterns even that simply wasn’t possible in any home I knew of then and it must be unusual now or there’d be no need for this campaign.

Dave was very fortunate in living in such a relaxed home, geared to the needs of its residents. It was 2000 – was Valuing People even a twinkle in Rob Greig’s eye? Yet this home got it so right. The staff had body piercings, tattoos and a history of animal-rights activism, and the residents had full, active lives doing things we take for granted. I was sorry when the owner sold up and moved away.

So, it can be done.The Heavy Load, a punk band of ten years’ standing, made up of musicians with and without learning disabilities, got fed up of people leaving their gigs at 9pm. They’re putting a lot of energy into the Stay Up Late campaign. Posters, T shirts, postcards, a CD, Green Cards to show staff if a late night’s planned, and finally gigs to promote it. They’re calling to Make Staying In History.

To find out more there’s a lot of websites – the main Heavy Load site or their MySpace profile or you can send an email to Paul Richards at Southdown Housing where they’re all based.

For more information about Decoda, email us, look at our website or phone us on 01424 444322.

If you’re looking for ideas to extend a sensory room this is the first of a series of short films showing how we use Soundbeam in our work with people with profound disabilities. We include switches for those who can use their hands – they encourage manipulation and introduce the idea of making something happen.

The Soundbeam, switches and vibro-accoustic seats are contained in a gazebo. People enjoy sitting in there and watching the activity in the rest of the hall.

Apologies for the background noise – it’s the pump of the bouncy castle across the hall.

If you’d like to know more about the Music Gym or using Soundbeam please get in touch
by email or by phoning 01424 444322.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv3xVirvw-M]

The Music Gym
Using sound, images, space and fun to engage people with complex needs

Welcome to the latest edition of the Music Gym newsletter, highlighting products, equipment and software that could be used in a setting like the Music Gym to engage people with profound disabilities.  You can find the full articles on the blog www.soundtherapy.org.uk and also details of suppliers for all the products.

News

You may notice that this month’s Newsletter is a little shorter than previous months. Don’t worry though, we’re not losing hope, in fact we’re more motivated than ever, because this month we have some very exciting news for all our readers!

You may remember that earlier in the year we gave some very cryptic hints concerning 2, or possibly 3 new Music Gyms set to open in the UK in 2011. Well we’re pleased that final preparations are now under way for the Music Gym Hereford! Aspire have been working with us for some time to create their own mobile Music Gym for the people of Hereford, and after a two month pilot project at the Royal National College for the Blind the facility will be providing meaningful activities throughout the area to all who can benefit.
For more details, why not take a look at our blog entry, and if you’d like more details of the equipment we’ll be providing, head on over to our Multi Sensory Solutions website

Product Spotlight

This month our spotlight falls upon the Hug Box, invented in the 1960’s by the now famous Temple Grandin. Sometimes known as a ’squeeze box’ or ‘hugging machine’ it’s a device intended to benefit people with autism by providing a calming effect and aiding its user in tolerating touch. The Hug Box works by providing ‘deep pressure hugs’ (proprioceptive stimuli) over the entire body, leading to an increased sense of calm for several hours after leaving the machine.
We take a look at this innovation, and examine how it mirrors steps we took ourselves in the Music Gym.

You can read more about the machine and its inventor on our blog

What we’re playing with this month

Pleasant Surprise of the Month

Generally we like to highlight a news item or product that’s brought a smile to our faces in the past month,  but  we’ve been so focused on making sure everything was in place for Tom’s trip to Hereford that we’ve not had time to prepare anything especially for this section.

As it happens though, we’d already stumbled across a very pleasant surprise this month, an interesting article written by Kay Green describing the early days of the Music Gym!

It seems fitting in this month that we look to the future, that we take a moment to remember our past.

Question of the Month

The question of the month concerns our old friends, the Buzz! Usb switches.
We’d received a few request s from our readers for something a little less advanced, a beginners guide to switches if you will. So Me, Tom and Sue gathered together in the office and boiled it down to the essential ingredients, made a film and took a lot of pictures to guide you step by step through the process.

We know we’ve been giving a lot of coverage to these of late, but we honestly believe that like Soundbeam, a well implemented switch system can provide limitless options within a sensory environment and can provide an individual their first ever experience of effecting change and of cause and effect.

You can read more here.

What is a Music Gym?

The Music Gym is something we’re passionate about: a methodology, an ethos, an innovative way of working with people with complex needs that uses similar equipment to that found in sensory rooms – however we place the emphasis on doing. Within the Gym sound and images are triggered and controlled by movement, helping to develop the relationship between the member and their supporter through fun and interaction. This combination of technology and physical activity produces something more than the sum of its parts, allowing the users to express themselves in ways they might not even have been aware of and providing skills that can be transferred to solving problems at home, in communication and making things happen.

The formation of the Music Gym Ltd is a new beginning for us, but one with a strong sense of continuity. As Decoda, we dedicated ourselves to the development and sale of equipment we had pioneered over seven years, led by need and the feedback from users of the equipment we designed to fill that need. This illustrates how our practice fed back into and informed research.

The Music Gym Ltd. doesn’t sell equipment, nor do we run the Music Gym as an ongoing facility.  Using the expertise we’ve accrued over the years, what we do instead is

• design interactive spaces up to full Music Gym size, recommending vendors and suppliers to help bring down the cost .

• offer training and consultation to individuals and organisations wishing to use interactive equipment with people with profound disabilities and in particular to make greater use of the interactive hardware and software we championed in our time as Decoda (for example Soundbeam, Arkaos and Unlocking Music)

• explore and pass on cost-saving ways of using technology

• produce instructional and training videos

  Our main aim is still to see Music Gyms available to all who can benefit from them.

The Music Gym Newsletter

Using sound, images, space and fun to engage people with complex needs

Welcome to the latest edition of the Music Gym newsletter, highlighting products, equipment and software that could be used in a setting like the Music Gym to engage people with profound disabilities.  You can find the full articles on the blog www.soundtherapy.org.uk and also details of suppliers for all products.

News

Plans are hotting up for the opening of new Music Gyms with two, and possibly three, now in the pipeline. The first two will be operating in the next couple of months. Our Music Gym site www.musicgym.org will have more details as this happens.

Some equipment from the Music Gym in Hastings will be used in the new Music Gyms and some we still have here including inflatables – the  maze from which we developed the Decodamaze and a bouncy castle (sold to us as an adult one but more suitable for children). We can supply the training to make both of these interactive. There’s also a Soundbeam and bits and pieces too numerous to mention. If you think you might be interested in buying any of these please contact tom@musicgym.org for more details.

Our websites are undergoing a bit of a revamp at the moment, so we’ve not yet put up the films and plans Tom is currently putting together for different building sizes and budgets. They are on youtube however.

What we’re playing with this month

This month Tom’s been strumming away on the Paper Jamz Guitar Santa hid beneath his Christmas tree. We managed to prise him away from it long enough to offer up a review, which you can read all about here on our blog.
Sadly the Paper Jamz Guitar is less suitable as an engagement tool than the drumkit we covered last month, but the reviews well worth a read.

Spotlight

On the blog we’ll have an occasional look at a person or organisation that’s inspired us in setting up the Music Gym, this time it’s Professor Phil Ellis a longtime champion of Soundbeam whose research on the development of therapies for children with special needs is often credited with being the start of Sound Therapy.
You can read all about it here.

Pleasant Surprise of the Month

This month we were pleasantly surprised by the Sensory Friendly Screenings of family movies that American-Multi-Cinema’s has begun holding (Odeon take note!). We take a look at the steps AMC took to make these screenings as autism friendly as possible, and how this is mirrored by the steps we ourselves took when running the Music Gym.
Another pleasant surprise was discovering there are a few places in the UK who have to adopted this practice! Sheffield, Clapham and Brixton

Question of the Month

Another Soundbeam question this month, this time from an overseas reader asking how you would go about playing recorded human voice on a Soundbeam. Tom provides an answer to this and several other Soundbeam related questions here.

If you have any questions of your own that you’d like answered, be they about Soundbeam or Music Gym Themes, why not drop us an email on info@musicgym.org

Music Gym Tutorials

This month we have two tutorials for you to sink your teeth into.

First up we discuss the possibilities of video in therapy with individuals with complex needs and try to come up with some activity ideas using one of our favourite (free) media players.

Second we have a tutorial describing how you’d go about setting up a switch accessible creative suite, allowing the user to create music and artwork or watch videos and listen to music using just one button!

No-Tech Idea of the Month

With all the technology available, it’s easy to forget that the Music Gym, at its heart, has always been about fun. When members and their supporters are having fun together then the communication flows – you just have to look at the Music Gym photos and films to see this.

This month’s we take a look at some of our most regular visitors to the Music Gym, Squiggly Normans; the creations of Chris Hoggins a textiles artist based in St Leonards. You can find out more by reading the article Squiggly Who? on the Sound Therapy site.

What is a Music Gym?

The Music Gym is something we’re passionate about: a methodology, an ethos, an innovative way of working with people with complex needs that uses similar equipment to that found in sensory rooms – however we place the emphasis on doing. Within the Gym sound and images are triggered and controlled by movement, helping to develop the relationship between the member and their supporter through fun and interaction. This combination of technology and physical activity produces something more than the sum of its parts, allowing the users to express themselves in ways they might not even have been aware of and providing skills that can be transferred to solving problems at home, in communication and making things happen.

The formation of the Music Gym Ltd is a new beginning for us, but one with a strong sense of continuity. As Decoda, we dedicated ourselves to the development and sale of equipment we had pioneered over seven years, led by need and the feedback from users of the equipment we designed to fill that need. This illustrates how our practice fed back into and informed research.

The Music Gym Ltd. doesn’t sell equipment, nor do we run the Music Gym as an ongoing facility.  Using the expertise we’ve accrued over the years, what we do instead is

• design interactive spaces up to full Music Gym size, recommending vendors and suppliers to help bring down the cost .
• offer training and consultation to individuals and organisations wishing to use interactive equipment with people with profound disabilities and in particular to make greater use of the interactive hardware and software we championed in our time as Decoda (for example Soundbeam, Arkaos and Unlocking Music)
• explore and pass on cost-saving ways of using technology
• produce instructional and training videos

  Our main aim is still to see Music Gyms available to all who can benefit from them.