Mind your music (patron Sir Mark Rylance) work with those struggling with mental health difficulties in Bristol and the surrounding areas. We use music to help change lives. We run regular weekly workshops and sometimes put on concerts. People with mental health difficulties take an active role in the creation and performance of music.

Here's what some of our beneficiaries have said about Mind Your Music:'The best thing in my life apart from my cat''Mind Your Music has been my most consistent mental health support for three years''Without it I wouldn't be here''Mind Your Music helps me remember who i am when my illness makes me forget''As soon as I get there I feel lifted up' 'Mind Your Music helps me be me'Elliot's storyWhen I was twenty-four years old, I was offered twenty-four hour care everyday for the rest of my life. I’d had eleven hospital admissions and took twenty-seven pills a day. My diagnosis was schizophrenia. One day, sitting in my flat in tears, I picked up the guitar. After playing for five minutes I noticed how it helped me forget how bad I felt. I put the guitar down and the feelings of anxiety returned. When I picked it up again, I again forgot how ill I was. It hit me…’what if I never put down the guitar again?’      It was the only thing that ever made any real difference to the way I felt. I played and played and played. I made music the centre of my life. I wrote over 2,000 songs. My recovery was so dramatic, it left people wondering if some sort of miracle had occurred. I lost seven stone in a year and my body returned to the healthy weight I was before I was ill. I left the mental health services and no longer needed any medication or treatment. I went from 80 cigarettes a day to zero overnight. I am now an award-winning songwriter and I work full time doing what I love. I have a lovely family and live in a nice part of town. I haven’t seen a G.P. about my mental health for over fifteen years. Music is the only medicine I’ve needed for over a decade now. Music reached me when it seems all hope had been lost. It succeeded where everything else failed. Music gave me my life and for that I’ll always be grateful.      In 2003, I set up the Mind Your Music project to see if music could transform other people’s lives like it had mine. In 2017 we received the prestigious Penny Johnstone award from Quartet Community Foundation in recognition of our ground breaking work. We started with just a handful of well intentioned people in a room running one music workshop a month. We now run workshops every week and are helping more people than ever before. We’ve even had to run two sessions a day because we can no longer fit the people in the room. We’ve taken people with serious mental illness and put them on stages as big as the Bristol Beacon (formerly the Colston Hall) in Bristol.  Elliot Hall, Music Project's Manager, Mind Your MusicStepping Out Theatre are our larger parent group who support our work. People often feel more comfortable donating to a registered charity (like Stepping Out) and so we are asking donations to be passed to them so they can fund our music workshop program in 2023. These are difficult times and we understand that many people are struggling financially. People with mental health difficulties are often among the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in our society. Please give what you can to help us help them and continue to use music to change lives.'Mind your music provide what mental health services often don't. A truly socially inclusive group that is led by service-users, and which fosters values of hope and courage. At MYM there is a culture of acceptance. Members of MYM feel valued, inspired, equal, and a valuable member of society. If only we could embed this culture in all mental health services. People at MYM feel that their lives can be meaningful, fruitful and fulfilled whatever else is going on for them'  - Rosalind Moreno-Parra, Peer Support Assistant, Second Step