A grant from The Charity of Thomas Oken & Nicholas Eyffler, is helping to unlock the power of music for residents living at Woodside Care Village in Warwick.

The generous grant is funding a second part-time musician, and contributing to the purchase of a range of percussion instruments, which will help our innovative care home to provide music-based activities every day.

Having recruited our first dedicated Community Musician in 2021, we now employ five Community Musicians ensuring residents in all of their 13 care homes benefit from the power of music. The donation to fund an additional musician and percussion instruments for Woodside Care Village, further enhances the music provision in the home and enables more residents to get involved with these activities.

Music is all about building relationships, engaging people and seeing them engage with others. Music connects and reaches people emotionally, and for family, friends and carers, it provides a way to bond even when speech fails. For people living with dementia, when understanding language and verbal communication becomes harder, music can unlock the brain and people who can no longer speak or follow a conversation can often still sing and even recall lyrics.

Ed Russell, Chief Executive of WCS Care said, “There are considerable therapeutic benefits of regular music, ensuring that the emotional memory stays “topped up”. The additional musician helps us to deliver our ambition of every day music-based experiences and opportunities at Woodside Care Village.”

Clive Mason, Chair of the Charity of Thomas Oken & Nicholas Eyffler said; “We are proud to have awarded a further grant to fund an additional musician to fill the home with music, following the previous grants given to support the home and its residents in Warwick.”

Photo: Musician David (right) playing guitar with Alan (left), a resident at Woodside Care Village