Sunlight leaking through trees

“…we were trying to create a new England, at least in music, where everyone's creativity was awakened, honoured and supported, and held to be a very precious thing that made the person valued and equal to everyone else.”

Dr. Phil Mullen has written a profoundly beautiful piece about his friend and colleague, the extraordinary musician Graham Dowdall whom we lost recently. The music he created as Gagarin, and collaborations with Nico and Pere Ubu speak to his talent, some of which you can hear here.

I came to know Graham through his work in community music in creating communities, as a source of social justice and of wellbeing. Phil's piece speaks of the power of music as liberation, as connection, as belonging which both of them lived, breathed, and taught.

I’m lucky to have trained with both Graham and Phil in their legendary Community Music course at Goldsmiths University at a time of reinvention, and to have had a whole new world opened up to me through their commitment and talents.

In the spirit of ‘who you are is how you coach’, I’m conscious that roots of my coaching and facilitation work reach deep into this learning of radical listening and the drawing out of people's innate wisdom and creativity.

Graham’s last album was entitled Komorebi, which deliciously means ‘sunlight leaking through trees’ and I love that I’ll now associate that experience with him when I walk in the woods.