Safe in Sound continued.. But music therapy for torture victims, although effective and beneficial, is not widely available. Most provision, says Dixon , is in London : ‘That is changing for the better but it is not going to happen that there will be full provision across the country.' For established refugee groups, however, support is constantly increasing. In 1998 the Refugee Council launched Refugee Week, a celebration of the arts and skills of immigrant communities throughout the country.

This annual June event has now grown into a huge festival supported by a large number of agencies, including Amnesty International, Save the Children, Refugee Action and the British Council as well as local councils and other groups. This year there were upwards of 300 events all around the UK . Lucy Crompton, national co-ordinator for Refugee Week, is clear about the value of music among immigrant groups. ‘I have always felt that the arts are a fantastic tool for celebrating culture and heritage and sharing it with other people,' she says.

Crompton also organises Celebrating Sanctuary, a free festival in London that forms part of Refugee Week. This year there were over 30 artists performing and more than 1,500 people attended. The artists came from a range of different cultures; one band brought together artists from Bosnia , Iraq , Uganda , the Congo , Poland and England .

‘It's fantastic walking around during Celebrating Sanctuary,' she says, ‘and seeing this hugely diverse audience watching people from all over the world perform.

A lot of people who come here have skills and talent and in many cases were successful in their home countries. They haven't come here to get benefits. They've come because they had to flee for their lives.'

Throughout the year, and the country, however, she echoes Katherine Rogers in describing provision as inconsistent. ‘But it is growing,' Crompton says. ‘An infrastructure to support it is definitely developing but it's uneven. Nobody can give a complete picture but compared with five years ago there is a great deal more being done.'

Crompton is on the management committee of another new organisation, the Refugees and the Arts Initiative. This London-based umbrella body provides information and support to refugees who are also artists, to help them develop their work and bring it to more mainstream venues outside their own communities.

For Rogers , such collaborative initiatives are essential to the effective provision of community support. She has been looking at what organisations are doing around the country to find examples of best practice and is clear that partnerships between organisations are vital. She cites the work of Sound It Out Community Music in Birmingham , which collaborates with the Midland Refugee Agency and various other bodies to identify people who can benefit from the work they do and find funding.

This sort of infrastructure is easier to build up in cities with established refugee communities. In areas without such communities, local providers have to find their own way.

‘In East Kent,' says Rogers , ‘we spend a lot of time finding what might be needed and then offering it. A lot of the people we do identify don't even know what an arts project is and they can be distrustful. They want to know what your agenda is. It's advocacy; you have to tell them what you do and why you do it.' All this work, of course, needs funding and there is an increasing number of bodies to help provide it. The Home Office gives some funding, normally for projects specifically concerned with integration. Arts Council England recently provided a Derby-based organisation, Kaleidoscope Community Music, with £21,000 to fund a two-year cross-cultural music project, World Song Derby. It also supports Youth Music, which has itself set up 20 action zones around the country. One of them, in the West Midlands , is specifically aimed at integrating young refugees into the community. Local authorities provide support, as does the BBC. There are also a good handful of small trusts and foundations helping with funding.

Whether all this support is as wholehearted as it might be is another question. One person, who asked not to be named, isn't sure: ‘Some of the funding is tokenistic. The Home Office is massively taking away money with one hand and then supporting individual projects to help integration. But integration is about public opinion. How can refugees be accepted if the public thinks they are criminals?'

Other organisations are now taking it very seriously. Creative Exchange, which connects organisations internationally to promote arts and social development, recently carried out a lot of research into this area; and the British Council held a conference on Arts and Refugees in March.
The number of groups working with music for refugees is growing apace and its expertise increasing. But there is still a requirement for a greater infrastructure to identify needs and the most effective ways of meeting them.

As Katherine Rogers says, ‘There are a lot of groups out there but this is still a hidden area of work.'