The Power of Music Fund

What is the fund?​

The Power of Music Fund supports grassroots music projects, including dementia choirs and music groups for carers, especially in parts of the country where the needs are the greatest. It will boost research and, through a new Centre of Excellence, create lasting change in the way the health system works with community groups.

What will the fund achieve?

The Fund will invest in grassroots social prescribing dementia projects with improved access to music and gather evidence of the benefits to people living with dementia and the wider health and social care system.​

By building bridges between the health and social care system and community groups, we can help to take pressure off health and care services and ensure that more people are able to live well with dementia.​

Through strategic shared investment – drawing on both grassroots and corporate expertise – we intend to create financially stable, easily accessible music for dementia groups for years to come.

Why is the fund needed?​

Music can be a lifeline for people living with dementia and their carers. While dementia is a progressive condition without a cure, music can improve mood, offer opportunities for self-expression, and creativity, strengthen personal relationships and reconnect people to those they love.​

However, dementia choirs and other grassroots music groups can struggle to meet costs from one week to the next. Too often their work is not integrated with the health system, meaning that people miss out on accessing activities that are available in their communities. This is what we need to change. The first round of Small Grants offers 70 multi-year grants to providers across the UK, benefitting over 4,500 people and championing innovators and best practice in the field, as well as focusing on areas of high need.​

The first Centre of Excellence is a partnership led by a music charity, Combined Authority, NHS, VCSE partners and a University. It will test new approaches to embedding music as part of dementia care, gather evidence of cost savings for the NHS and local authority, and design new models of care which can be scaled up and spread across the UK.