Maestro!

Patrick Dineen is a composer, musician and musical director. He's composed for theatre, TV and radio. He's written operas and ballet scores. When Liverpool was European Capital of Culture back in 2008, he was the person who was asked to compose the music for the year's opening ceremony. A task which involved scoring 100 musicians playing across the city's rooftops!

And over the past few months, he's been working on a project with us at work. In partnership with our colleagues at Writing on the Wall, we commissioned Patrick to work with a group of participants to create a sound installation.

The 12 week course kicked off back in October as part of Liverpool Mental Heath Festival and we launched the final piece, 'Finding Some Way Through: A City of the Mind' tonight at a 'Listening Party' at the Rotunda Community College, to coincide with what's sometimes called 'Blue Monday' - said to be the most depressing day of the year.

The course participants were each responsible for creating, through sound alone, a district of an imaginary city, and the piece follows the journey of an individual as they make their way through the city and its potential perils and pleasures, memories and minefields. Patrick worked with them brilliantly to pull the whole piece together and the crowd of people who came along to hear it tonight were genuinely moved by it. One called it "Epic!", a couple said it made them think of something Pink Floyd might have recorded and my favourite piece of feedback was "If you made a Film Noir about the current refugee crisis, it would sound like this!"

Most of the group of people who worked with Patrick were able to be with us tonight and they all spoke passionately and proudly about how they'd created their 'districts of sound' and what the project had meant to them. It was amazing!

We're hoping to install the piece elsewhere across the city throughout the year but you can also hear the full 22 minute soundscape at... www.liverpoolmentalhealth.org/finding-some-way-through-a-city-of-the-mind/

It's worth a listen!

Huge thanks to Patrick and everyone who made this project such a success - especially, of course, the project participants: Paul, Adrian, Rebecca, David, Stephen, Mark and Becky.