A visit from The Ambassador

Musicians: Arthur Lea (piano) Alice Zawadzki (violin & vocals) Ben Hazleton (double bass)

In May 2021 it was announced that the Spitz would be one of a number of charities to receive support from the Paul & Nick Harvey Fund. On the day of the nationwide announcement, the BBC visited Bridgeside Lodge to see us in action.

As a follow-up to this, we were visited on Thursday 2nd December by Grace Meadows, Campaign Director for Music For Dementia UK (who distributed the fund) and BBC broadcaster Lauren Laverne (Music For Dementia Ambassador).

Grace and Lauren participated in a group music session in which Alice Zawadzki and Ben Hazleton performed some of resident JG's favourite classical arias and some soul numbers for new resident DG.

While this was going on on the first floor, resident JC dived into a song-writing session with pianist Arthur Lea. By the time Spitz GM Thom managed to drag Grace and Lauren away from the first floor session and up to the third "That's The Plan" was well underway. All that was missing was a few lyrics which Lauren (with her knowledge of horse breeds) was able to supply! Negotiations are ongoing about split writing credit for the song.

After the sessions, there were interviews with Grace, Thom, Alice and Bridgeside Lodge manager Fatma, as well as with Lauren herself. We were really chuffed to hear Lauren speak about the day with reference to the original Spitz venue:

"I remember The Spitz when it was a music venue and that's the quality of music you would have seen on the stage"

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Lauren joined presenter Laura Whitmore on BBC Radio 5 Live on Sunday 7th February to discuss her visit to Bridgeside Lodge in her role as ambassador for Music For Dementia.

You can listen to Lauren and Laura's chat below.

You can catch up on the full show on BBC sounds here