Singing Mamas at Home
2023
Singing on prescription to boost mothers’ wellbeing across Merseyside
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Singing Mamas at Home evaluation findings reportOne Day At A Time by Penny Stone
Shortwork collaborated with Singing Mamas to evaluate the UK’s first digital “singing on prescription” programme, At Home with Singing Mamas. Designed to bring the benefits of singing to mothers in Merseyside, the programme was co-created with mothers, NHS maternity staff, and social prescribing workers. Through our evaluation, we developed a toolkit for capturing feedback, including creative exercises, a mood meter, surveys, and interviews. This helped assess the programme’s impact, identify areas for improvement, and ensure it continues to deliver wellbeing, confidence, and connection for mothers and their babies.
Our Approach
We focused on capturing meaningful feedback and insights to understand how the programme impacted participants and inform ongoing improvements:
Evaluation toolkit: Creative tools captured participant and staff feedback, including surveys, interviews, and a mood meter.
Co-design reflection: Worked alongside mothers and NHS staff to ensure evaluation insights informed programme improvements.
Engagement tracking: Monitored participant interaction to understand benefits and outcomes.
Key Findings
Our research revealed the positive effects of the programme on mothers, children, and the wider community:
High-quality content: The platform launched successfully with engaging videos featuring mothers, babies, and toddlers.
Inclusive co-design: Mothers and health professionals ensured content felt welcoming, authentic, and connected participants to the singing circle.
Positive participant engagement: Women actively listened, sang along, involved their children, shared songs with family, and used them to manage emotions.
Personal benefits: Participants reported improved singing ability, increased confidence, time for themselves, comfort, social connection, deep breathing, and motivation to join in-person groups.
Staff and community support: NHS staff valued the accessible service and became advocates, while community referrals were highly effective at encouraging participation.
Warm feedback: Participants praised the tone, song choices, visuals, and grounding warm-ups.
Outputs
To share the findings in an engaging and accessible way, we collaborated with illustrator Kamal Kohonoor to create a series of illustrated findings posters.
In addition, we worked with community researcher Theresa Gooda and Rachel Waite from Holistic Harmonies to co-create a song, “Brick by Brick,” which captured the project’s key messages. The song was performed at a celebration event, bringing the research to life in a joyful and memorable way.
The event also featured a unique performance art piece, “The Living Painting,” which portrayed Catherine “Kitty” Fisher, a historical figure from Petworth’s past. Written by Kathryn Attwood and Theresa Gooda and performed by Rachel Fullegar, the piece reflected on Kitty’s imagined perspective on Petworth today, weaving in themes from the research findings.
Impacts and learnings
The Petworth House team shared their enthusiasm for the project's impact:
“We believe having embarked on this community action research project it has fundamentally altered our approach to audience engagement and project planning. This work has set in train a way of working that hands over power and has fostered a culture of dialogue.
This research will provide the Petworth House team with the mechanisms and inspiration to think creatively, experimentally, and strategically about their ways of working. The information gathered will enable us to create relevant and focused programming, to develop a research strategy that addresses the concerns and interests of our audiences, and approach interpretation of the house and collections in a more inclusive and experimental way.
Vitally this work has set in train a methodology that will continue to be used in the future and will foster a culture of conversation and collaboration.”
“I felt a sense of connection to Singing Mamas and the opportunity to feel held in the early days and weeks after birth.”
Singing Mamas at Home Participant
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