What We Do
George’s Rockstars – Our Mission
George’s Rockstars
George’s Rockstars was set up in late 2019 by George’s family with the simple mission to make children in hospital smile as much as George did, starting with providing music therapy in children’s hospital wards.
Why Music Therapy?
George was fortunate enough to benefit from music therapy sessions while in isolation during his bone marrow transplant at Bristol Children’s Hospital. Music therapy was the highlight of George’s week during a very tough time and George’s parents saw how happy the children on the ward were when the music therapist came around. It gave a then 4 year old George a way to express his feelings of frustration.
What Is Music Therapy?
“Music therapy is an established psychological clinical intervention, which is delivered by Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) registered music therapists, to help people of all ages, whose lives have been affected by injury, illness or disability through supporting their psychological, emotional, cognitive, physical, communicative and social needs.”
– British Association for Music Therapy
For children who have life threatening illnesses or disabilities, music therapy can be an extremely effective way of helping them to communicate their thoughts, feelings and worries during difficult and stressful times.
Our Work So Far
Initial fundraising started in November 2019 with the aim to raise over £5000 to enable us to register as an official charity.
Thanks to tremendous support from George’s school, Curdridge Primary and help from Rocksteady Music School, our first target was hit in just 6 weeks enabling us to apply for registration which we received in March 2020. We have regular fundraising events from abseils to quiz nights.
We have since been hard at work applying for more funding through grants and corporate sponsorship and have took on our first music therapist, Cathy, for the children’s department in Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth.
Our aim is to expand the number of hospitals we provide music therapy in as the charity and funding grows and in 2021 we aim to start providing music therapy at Southampton Children’s Hospital.
Our first official charity film!
We are so proud to show the difference music therapy has been making to children in hospitals, now across 4 Hampshire hospitals in George’s name. Bella especially was very proud to see how she is helping children like her brother smile during the filming.
We couldn’t help these children without your support so thank you! Please share the video and help us grow support for the charity.
We now need to take on a second music therapist to meet the demand and we have a waiting list of children’s wards and hospitals who would love to bring music therapy to help the children in their hospital so your support will make a huge difference to more children.
Huge thanks to Ollie Uglow – Freelance Filmmaker for helping us show the world what we do and working so hard to create this and to all the families involved in the film. 💛