Meet the Directors
Liv McLennan
Co-Director
Liv is a community musician, creative practitioner and trainer. She enjoys working with people of all ages, and is particularly interested in arts and health, community-building through music-making, and democratising access to music.
Liv’s work focuses on people of all ages with longer term health conditions (particularly dementia and respiratory conditions), children in the early years and their families, and delivering training and mentoring in both dementia awareness and community music approaches. She also has a private instrumental teaching practice and freelances for various organisations, including Dementia Pathfinders, Boogie Mites, Historic Royal Palaces, Museum of London and Salisbury Museum.
As well as holding the Certificate in Music Workshop Skills from Goldsmiths College since 2010, she was part of the first cohort to be awarded the Level 4 Certificate for Music Educators: Early Childhood in 2018. She is currently undertaking doctoral studies in intergenerational music within a care home setting at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Liv plays the cello, highland bagpipes and ukulele, and uses singing in her community music work.
Chris Cook
Co-Director
Since 2007, Chris Cook has worked as a music workshop leader in London, Coventry and Grenoble. The main client groups are elders in care homes and day centres. At Newham College of Further Education, Chris taught music and music technology to adults within the Additional Learning Needs Department and with Coventry Performing Arts, working in special needs settings as well as teaching whole class instrumental lessons.
Chris completed the Certificate in Music Workshop Skills at Goldsmiths University and holds a PGCE in Further Education.
Chris Cook has played sitar since 1998, and has passed the PRSSV Grade 8 Exam with Distinction. Has learnt from sarangi player Surgeet Singh, sitar player Ramesh Chandra and currently with Dharambir Singh. In 2013, Chris gained a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship grant to research the teaching and learning of Indian Classical Music by visiting North India. This involved four months of learning with his Guruji Pt Shivnath Mishra in Benares. As well as learning Indian Classical Music, Cook has performed over 300 concerts of sitar fusion with electronic music, released albums on labels such as Bip Hop and Wrong Music.
Chris has run community projects such as Olympic Sound (2010), Newham World Generations (2011), Coventry Songs of Joy (2015) and Music of Benares (2015).
Chris now lives and works in Grenoble, France, collaborating regularly with VS Art Grenoble running music sessions with elders, children and with young people with learning difficulties
Kevin Plummer
Co-Director
Kevin Plummer is a musician, composer and teacher who has worked as a community music facilitator for 20 years. He has worked mainly with adults with learning disabilities and people living with dementia.
In 2007 he studied a Certificate in Community Workshop Skills at Goldsmiths. Between 2012 and 2019 he worked as Musician in Residence at a Barchester Healthcare home for people with dementia. He continues to work for Newham council as a music teacher for learning disabilities. He also composes, records and performs music with his band.
Our Friends and Associates
Ann-Marie Dean
Leader, Tisbury Memory Group and coordinator for Tisbury Move and Make Music group
Ann-Marie is responsible for the Tisbury Memory Group, who we are pleased to partner with. She has a skilled working knowledge of dementia and vulnerable people within the community.
Ann-Marie has strong local networks and acts as the administrator and support for the Tisbury Move and Make Music project.
Jane Ebel
Director, Muse SW CIC
Jane was the project coordinator for our recent dementia-inclusive projects, Moving Music Online and Move and Make Music.
Jane has spent most of her life living and working in Russia and Eastern Europe. She started by selling computers in Moscow; but quickly moved sideways into health and social care, by selling PCs to hospitals and schools across the country. In the last 15 years, Jane has worked mainly in Moldova, developing and delivering a bespoke training package around therapeutic music making with children and adults. She is now based in Salisbury, working with people who live with dementia. Music and creativity plays an essential part in this engagement.
Rose Maylin
Parish Nurse, Grace Church Salisbury
With a special interest in lung conditions, Rose works with us to support our Sing and Breathe introductory courses and our Sing and Breathe Academy.
Rose worked as a Practice Nurse for over 35 years in various practices including a prison, specialising particularly in the management of long term conditions, and trained as a Parish Nurse in October 2018. She offers the residents of Bemerton Heath and St Peter’s Place support with their health needs
Rose is registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and holds diplomas in Diabetes, Asthma, COPD and Family Planning.
Our Projects
We work in London and the South with people with long term health conditions, people with learning disabilities and intergenerationally. Find out more about our past and current projects here.
Training
We are all community music practitioners alongside running Sounds Better CIC, so understand the training needs, the challenges, and the techniques that are most effective in the room better than anyone.
Volunteer
Depending on the role, we can offer training in facilitation, experience in working with people with long term health conditions and learning disability and a way to connect with your local community more.