Can live music improve the nation's wellbeing? We bring the people who can answer that into the same room — in Sheffield, in the days leading up to Tramlines Festival.
JOIN THE CONVERSATIONThe initiative
Music + Wellbeing is our ongoing initiative with the University of Sheffield, built around one question: can live music help improve the health of the nation?
We see the answer every day in what our members tell us, and in research with NHS staff showing what a night out can do for mental health and social connection. Through an annual conference in Sheffield, smaller satellite events and independent research, we're bringing together academics, health bodies and the live music industry to turn that instinct into evidence solid stakeholders can act on.
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We believe live music does people good. Not as a metaphor, but as something measurable: better mental health, stronger teams at work, communities that hold together better.
It started with NHS staff, though it was never only about them. Whatever happens in a hundred-capacity room above a pub happens in a stadium too. Music + Wellbeing exists to prove it properly, so that the people who fund health, work and culture start counting live music as something that pays back.
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WHAT'S HAPPENING
Over the coming year the work spreads out. There's an up coming event in Sheffield built around workplace wellbeing, and a co-produced event with a European festival partner splitting the question between what live music does for audiences and what it does for the people who put the show on.
Alongside that, further commissioned research with the University of Sheffield, a partnership taking music therapy into homes and hospitals and back out to live events, and M+W speakers appearing on other people's stages under our own banner. It all feeds the next multi-day conference in Sheffield, ahead of Tramlines weekend in July 2027.
Loneliness
Live events reduce feelings of isolation - an hour in a crowd does something a screen can't.
Belonging
Shared experience builds social connection and community cohesion, street by street.
Mental wellbeing
Attendance improves mood and mental wellbeing, at a fraction of the cost of treating its absence.
Burnout and recovery
Time away from workplace stress supports resilience - which is why we start with key workers.
Access
None of it counts if you can't get in the room. Tickets are the mechanism; access is the product.
Measurable value
Social value you can evidence, so funders and health systems can act on it.
"Music and wellbeing — the connection between wellbeing and music is my lived experience. It's been my saviour in my life."
"The cost of looking after a population's mental wellbeing is extraordinary. And that cost can be alleviated by doing things like attendance at live events."
"For me, being on the stage is almost a spiritual experience. I try to think of it like a communion of the souls."
"The power of live music to connect communities, promote wellbeing."