The Messengers

The Messengers is a project model for socially engaged arts practice, which sees people from vastly different backgrounds, with equally diverse stories, find a common purpose in writing and performing music together. The band is comprised of students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and people who seek support from St Mungo’s Homeless Charity and are at varying stages of recovery from issues related to homelessness.
 
The Messengers, as a socially engaged arts project, have broken new ground in terms of artistic successes with performances at the Jazz Café and major UK music festivals, as well as recording with an international record label. The project is now ready to take the next step and embrace new challenges by becoming an independent social enterprise, focussing on wider outreach and leadership training of existing members.
 
The Messengers-outreach (working title) would see existing members of the Messengers form small workshop teams which would deliver music workshops with vulnerable adults across the city.  The team would be made up of graduates of the Guildhall School and St Mungos clients, who are long standing members of the band. 

The team:

Sigrún Sævarsdóttir-Griffiths leads creative and collaborative music projects in a vast range of community contexts for arts and higher education organizations across England, Europe and Asia.  Sigrun is Course Leader of the Masters in Leadership Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. A multi-instrumentalist, Sigrun specialises in the facilitation of collaborative music making within arts environments as well as community contexts, particularly with vulnerable children and adults. 
Sigrun is passionate about enabling music making and access to the arts as an essential, unifying element of life in every community.
 
Simon Phillips has been running community education projects for over 14 years. Firstly for St. Mungo’s, working with adults who have an experience of homelessness, and now with Quaker Social Action with families on low incomes. Simon believes in the ability of creative opportunities to provide motivation for learning and the chance to communicate ideas and thoughts with other people. His work with the Messengers and co-producing the art and writing magazine, Homeless Diamonds, with people at St. Mungo’s has given him first-hand experience of how the arts can help people bring about positive change in their lives. Moreover, he has seen the value of encouraging people to work together to reduce social isolation.