Packing a Punch

continued..

Sound Sense helps in a wide variety of ways, from offering basic administrative help such as a Criminal Record counter-signatory service (a simple but indispensable thing to a freelancer; members get this free) to answering questions such as: ‘How do I get work? How do I stop feeling isolated? How do I know what is professional for me as a worker? Members have special benefits and privileges but almost all Sound Sense's services are open to anybody.

‘It provides the stitching that holds this whole patchwork of the provision of community music together,' says Deane, ‘without in any sense telling each individual musician how they should behave, where they should go or what qualifications they should have.'

Goldsmith graduate Catherine Pestano is living proof that this all works. She once felt she occupied a grey space between music teacher and social worker but Sound Sense helped her ‘realise a professional identity'. The organisation's bulletin board and regular publications have opened up a wide range of work for her too – she now works in a variety of fields, from drum circles to vocal groups, with many different client groups. ‘It lets you know you're not alone.'

One of Sound Sense's other jobs is dealing with the purchasers of community music activities.

Again, Pestano provides a glowing report: ‘Kathryn is amazing, in the way she keeps on trying to get heard by government. She seems very good at lobbying, at reaching the people we need to reach.'

‘We spend half of our time telling everybody just how important community music is,' Deane concurs, ‘and that means going to government and explaining why it is that the way community musicians work is important, that they need to fund community music activities and how it will help them to do so. We've got a sort of bridging role to play, a conduit between individuals working in their own community and infrastructure at government level.'
Deane is justly proud of Sound Sense's achievements to date, particularly of the partnerships it has built with other arts organisations and government. From these links come significantly greater recognition of what community music is and how it benefits society.

‘Of course we're far too modest to claim all the credit for that,' says Deane. ‘A lot of people have worked towards it but I think we've played our part in putting community music's ethos and practices centre stage.' Now Deane wants to see ‘many more people in membership of Sound Sense' and its membership scheme is currently being improved and expanded.

‘If we want to retain this huge broad range of what people do, in a world that's becoming ever more increasingly regulated and sat on, the stronger that Sound Sense is – in terms of the breadth and number of its members – the more that community music as a whole will be able to survive and strive,' Deane insists. ‘My vision is to see a really strong, thriving connected sector in which each practitioner still understands their own place within the communities that they work in – because that's vital to the way community music works – but feels comforted, supported, secure in the knowledge that there's an organisation that's working for their good all the time and providing them with the services they need.'

Contacts

Kathryn Deane
Executive Director
Sound Sense
7 Tavern Street
Stowmarket
Suffolk
IP14 1PJ35

Tel/Fax: 01449 673 990/994

info@soundsense.org