This summer a host of major talent from the worlds of music and film come together in a new project funded by Culture Online, part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Billy Bragg, Michael Nyman and Emily Young are amongst those who have given up their time to work in hospices on music, song and film with people facing long-term and terminal illness. The Rosetta Requiem, a cycle of songs and films forming the latest project from hospice charity Rosetta Life, enables people in palliative care to use artistic expression to share their hopes and fears at a time when words are simply not enough.
From July and running throughout the year, the Rosetta Requiem will showcase performances and live webcasts connecting people of all ages isolated by illness. The website can be found at http://www.rosettarequiem.org from late July (preview sections available at http://www.rosettalife.org).
The first live webcast on July 6 will link London primary school children, Great Ormond Street Hospital and a South African children's hospice in a performance of their songs. Also that week, Orlando Gough and members of The Shout make the music for a hospice performance in Greenwich and David Matthews sees his composition for voice and strings premiered at Clapham's Trinity Hospice. These events begin the rollout of finished work being made available over the summer to the hospice community and audiences through performance, the website and the internet.
Other artists involved in the project around the country include composers and musicians Jarvis Cocker, Orlando Gough, David Matthews, Robin Walker, Julie Yount-Morgan and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, rapper Roots Manuva and filmmaker Asif Kapadia.
Lucinda Jarrett, Rosetta's Artistic Director, says: "Our ideas of death and dying are rooted in sadness and melancholy. We wanted to make this Requiem one that celebrates the hope, laughter and intense love of life experienced by the people we meet in the hospices."
Arts Minister David Lammy, said: "The strength of Rosetta Requiem from Culture Online and Rosetta Life, lies in the genuine warmth of those people involved. Filmmakers, musicians and composers have given up their time and it's humbling to think of the courageous and open-hearted contribution of those people who face long-term and terminal illness. No one can fail to be moved by this incredible project."
The extensive website carries inspirational and moving personal stories, insight into how the artists and patients work together and the finished songs and films. Broadband links and internet messaging connect the hospice users and provide a vital networking path for patients, volunteers, relatives and friends from Penrith to Weymouth and from England to Africa.
The project is backed by Culture Online to help people from all parts of the community gain access to the arts through new media and technology. The children's webcast is being made possible with the support of MSN.
Notes for editors:
Rosetta Requiem is funded by Culture Online, part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Culture Online commissions interactive projects to extend access to the Arts. Many of the projects involve mass participation and encourage people to connect with cultural and heritage organisations in a fresh and exciting way. Culture Online uses technology to bring people together to reach new and existing audiences. For more information visit: http://www.cultureonline.gov.uk
Rosetta Life (http://www.rosettalife.org) was founded in 1999 by Lucinda Jarrett as an artist-led organisation set up to run artist-led residencies in hospices, help families facing death tell the stories that matter to them and share them with an audience of their choice. With a grant from DfES multi-media arts centres have been set up in the hospices which allow participation in learning activities and contribute to the quality of life at the end of life.
Wireless outreach networks in hospices make digital arts available at a patient's website. The shared website helps create a collective voice for palliative care users and currently links 15 specialist palliative care centres in England.
At each hospice site Rosetta Life have installed an Apple-based Digital Arts Centre, comprising desktops, laptops, video and stills cameras. Rosetta Life artists train hospice users, their families, staff and volunteers in the use of this equipment - with Photoshop, iMovie, Word, e-mail etc - so that they can tell stories that matter.
The website is designed by Alex Roberts, Eurologic, and Andrew Walker of Thin Martian.
The children's webcast is facilitated by Microsoft, supported by Microsoft, Logitech and BT, as an exemplary model for the latest version of MSN Messenger.
Support for the Rosetta Requiem
Billy Bragg, songwriter and musician
"Working with hospices to make songs for the Rosetta Requiem has been inspirational for me. I've been constantly surprised to find how open people are to expressing themselves once they have been given a way-in. The women brought the words and I've simply helped channel them into songs and music to make a way through serious illness and emotional turmoil."
Carrie & David Grant, vocal coaches and presenters of BBC One, Facing the Music and Fame Academy
"The Rosetta Requiem project is an absolutely fantastic idea. Music has a profound effect on both the well and the unwell and we should never underestimate its healing power. We support it wholeheartedly."
Orlando Gough, composer and musical director of The Shout
"Writing songs with the people at the Greenwich and Bexley Cottage Hospice has been great. Persuading them to sing what we have come up with is even better - just up my street!"
Jarvis Cocker, musician
"It's been a real eye-opener working with children, seeing what they put in and get out of the project. Its exciting absorbing their ideas and helping them shape the words and music they've generated for the Requiem."
Oliver Sacks, neurologist and writer
"Art, story-telling, and, above all, music have a unique and powerful ability to bring meaning and coherence to human experience, even when it is threatened by severe illness. Rosetta Life brings the arts into the lives of people faced with life threatening conditions, providing a remarkable opportunity for creative self-expression and, in the deepest sense, access to the health within."
Gill Thomas, art therapist at Trinity Hospice
"Trinity Hospice supports people to enhance their quality of life while living with cancer. The Rosetta Requiem has enabled this to happen creatively for some individuals in the most amazing way. As an art therapist, having the opportunity to be an artist for this project has been both exciting and enriching."
Dawn Halsall, acting Head, Sudbourne Primary School, Brixton
"Sudbourne staff and children have benefited from having a greater understanding of illness. It has been a wonderful, unique and exciting project for everyone."