Melanie Boda's Colleagues at Electric Umbrella
Melanie Boda's Contact Details
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Watford, England, United Kingdom
Electric Umbrella
Melanie Boda's Company Details
Electric Umbrella is a registered charity challenging the perception about people with learning disabilities and enriching and empowering lives through music. Based in South-West Hertfordshire and working across the county, Electric Umbrella facilitate regular, meaningful social interaction for our adult members with learning disabilities. Through the development of communities, Electric Umbrella are being recognised for challenging perceptions and stereotypes. To do this we run regular music sessions, put on gigs and tours, run an Electric Umbrella choir, have written and staged our own musical, host festivals, released and album and played live on radio - all led by people with learning disabilities working alongside professional musicians, technicians, dancers and actors.It's all about the magic that happens when people with learning disabilities and professional musicians work shoulder to shoulder. It's about discovering and showing who people really are. It's about achieving incredible things together. It's about adapted instruments, being absolutely person-centred, making extraordinary adjustments, and it being perfectly acceptable that sometimes it takes three people to play a cello! Co-creation and a ‘can do' attitude is at the heart of what Electric Umbrella is all about.Each year we perform to 1,500 people in day services and residential homes who would not otherwise have access to live music. We perform to over 5,000 mainstream primary and secondary school children, to 15,000 people though our gigs, tours and festival appearances and reach over half a million people through online and social media content.Music is our vehicle, yet aside from all the therapeutic and educational benefits of our sessions we are providing purpose, a sense of worth and a sense of belonging for some of society's most misrepresented people.We're striving for a world where everything is a little more ‘Electric Umbrella'.