Ep 80 Georgina Aasgaard

Music Therapy Conversations

Georgina Aasgaard

Cellist and Music and Health Practitioner

Georgina Aasgaard is a Liverpool based Cellist and Music and Health practitioner who has a passion for bringing Music from the concert platform to challenging and more intimate environments. She has 20 years of experience delivering music interventions in a broad range of health and social settings such as hospitals, mental health units, prisons, homes for the elderly as well as community centres for refugees and the homeless. Her practice includes 15-year partnerships with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, Alder Hey NHS Foundation Trust and Live Music Now. She has also aworked for 10 years with DadaFest and Drake Music, engaging with people with disabilities through music making and technology . As a musician in residence, she has led innovative and groundbreaking programmes which include both one to one interaction on intensive care units and group work in mental health units. She has co-created recovery courses, co-produced performances, exploring skills such as improvisation, composition, songwriting, music technology, and including employability opportunities. Her activities have been measured through co-evaluation methods and continuous contact with patients and service users.

These collaborations have enabled her to draw on her experiences to create context specific training and mentoring programmes. She is currently developing a toolkit for musicians working in healthcare, informed by her collaborative work over the years and her research activities.

Georgina was awarded a Pre-doctoral Local Authority Fellowship by the NIHR, as a Director of Training and Development Research for Live Music Now, working in partnership with the University of Liverpool to investigate the influence of non-clinical music interventions on mental health.

She currently works in close collaboration with The Liverpool Centre for Health, Art, Society and Environment (CHASE) at the University of Liverpool aiming to foster critical inquiry, dialogue and creativity to build new knowledge about enabling creative communities through music collaboration and cross-sector partnerships. As part of this collaboration, she has been granted a new Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP) award funded by the AHRC to investigate how collaborations between academics and partners from across different sectors can work to benefit health and wellbeing.

Awards and Honorary Fellowship

· 05/07/2022: Festival of Learning Awards: Winner of the President’s Award. Music and Mental Health Programme at the Life Rooms, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Lead musician

· 01/02/2021: Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Awards: Winner of the Impact Award on Health and Wellbeing Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Lead Musician

· 01/05/2019: Winner of the Merseyside Woman of the Year in the category of Arts, Culture and Media

· 01/03/2016: NHS Award in Health and Care - Certificate of Recognition for Commitment to learning in Health and Care

· 01/09/2011: University of Liverpool Honorary Fellowship, Music and Wellbeing

· 01/09/2010: NHS Positive achievement Award in Mental Health