Ben Richardson

About Ben's career

Please briefly outline what you are doing now

Currently, I work as a music therapist at a social enterprise which offers education to vulnerable adolescents who might be at risk of: dropping out of the education system entirely; worsening mental health conditions; substance abuse; and gang-related activities.

I work with a team of therapists (Speech and Language, Occupational, Drama, and Art) to support them to re-enter the mainstream education system, and create lasting and important strategies that they can use to manage their mental health needs throughout their life. 

The highlight of this work is quite plain: I get to see the whole depth and breadth of emotion and creativity that exists within all adolescents laid before me.  It has been and will continue to be an honour to see and be a part of.  

Studying at Newcastle

What did you like most about your music degree?

Whilst I enjoyed the city and the University itself immensely, it was the people who made my time studying so amazing.

In terms of faculty, I was really pleased to be somewhere where I could pursue composition, performance, and musicology all at once. I never felt boxed in, rather I felt inspired and encouraged to try every corner that a degree in music offered.

When doing my dissertation, I took a lot of joy in the freedom to explore my area of research and my tutor’s history and background was both useful and interesting in its own right during this time.

However, it was my peers who I will always remember. I made my closest friends studying music. I learned lots of new things from them which have made me the musician I am today, and the opportunities outside of the course but still within a music framework (Drama society, Big Bands etc) were all part of my journey to studying music therapy.

Meeting people from other courses and hearing their stories eventually led to me being pointed in the direction of music therapy as a career. Had I not had those musical opportunities outside of the course, I might not have heard about it when I did and might not be where I am today.

In what ways did your music degree at Newcastle prepare you for your current role?

My current role is a mixture of community-based work, online work, and work in a hub. At Newcastle, I gained a lot of new skills which have helped me with all of this in my current role, as well as helping me in my MA in Music Therapy.

The music studios at ICMus were a fantastic resource to have. I remember using them myself for private mixing, as well as being involved in larger band recordings using that space.

Being able to get to grips with complicated equipment and learning more about live sound were part of the reason that I’m able to use music technology in such a proficient way to support the young people I work with in using it themselves. It’s also part of my own side-hustle in managing live sound for small stage shows, and then mixing and recording those shows into albums or videos.

I also benefitted from the performance side in my first and third year. The skills I learned as a performer in jazz improvisation meant I was well-placed to receive further improvisation lessons when I went to Guildhall, and I learned how to enjoy performing and playing instruments with others through the bands and groups I engaged with at Newcastle. Naturally, I still use these skills everyday with the young people I work with and I can make them feel at ease when they play with the instruments themselves: something which might usually be very anxiety-provoking.

My time researching for my dissertation at Newcastle also meant that, when it came to write my research project at Guildhall, I was familiar with what was needed to write a substantial document, backed by references but still outlining an original, tangible conclusion which added to existing literature rather than parroting it back.

My research at Guildhall was a fantastic experience and I feel I was only able to enjoy it as much as I did because I wasn’t having to learn from scratch how to write academically. I was delighted to pass my MA in music therapy with a distinction and an award for achieving over 80% in my research paper, and these were skills that I learned at Newcastle.

Music therapy is great but, particularly in my setting, it is 50% music and 50% report writing! Because of the mixture of opportunities at Newcastle studying music, I feel like it was the perfect precursor to my role now and honed the transferrable skills that I need to use everyday.