Guest Blog: Charlotte Cunningham Talks MUSICAL PORTRAITS

I had to dig deep into the archives on our website to find out exactly when the route to Musical Portraits began. Turtle Key Arts have always enjoyed working in partnership with other arts organisations, and our work with young people with Autism Spectrum Conditions began back in 2001 when we ran our first Turtle Opera - a free 10-week music, design and performance project in collaboration with the Royal Opera House.

This ran for several years, and we developed a strong working practice with 10-14 year olds on the autistic spectrum. There was now a genuine need from families for a high-quality music project from Turtle Key Arts every year!

In 2008, we developed a relationship with the Wigmore Hall through a wonderful music project which fitted perfectly into this model. Separately, we collaborated with the National Portrait Gallery. They had funding for an existing music and visual art project called Every Picture Tells a Story, which they were keen to adapt for young people on the autistic spectrum.

After these very successful projects, we all met up and realised that an overall collaboration would be possible - the amazing resources of the National Portrait Gallery and the extraordinary musicians and venue of Wigmore Hall supported by the experience and pastoral teams from Turtle Key Arts. That's how Musical Portraits was born.

The format sounds so simple and yet over the years many hours have gone into developing it: the right kind of training for the team, how to best recruit children and what resources they need before they come to the project, how can we support some of the more complicated needs, how to make sure that those who will get the most out of this experience can have access to it, and how to create a legacy for the children after the project has finished.

Having partners like the NPG and the Wigmore Hall has been extraordinary. We have all inputted ideas and new resources year on year and have spent hours discussing the needs of individual children.

As part of the legacy, the National Portrait Gallery now has one of their Friday concerts in the gallery dedicated to the musicians from the Wigmore Hall playing a programme that includes the children's compositions. We have developed Musical Portraits Band, an annual reunion for previous participants, and we're thinking about how to maintain links with the children as they get older. Turtle Key Arts already runs the Key Club, a free monthly arts club for over-16s on the autistic spectrum, which many of the children we first meet at Musical Portraits go on to join.

The links between our organisations and the individuals who work on the projects are strong and enduring, and for the young people of Musical Portraits, it is this stability and the clarity of communication between us all that allows them to thrive - both artistically and socially - beyond the project itself.

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