The Music Therapy Room: A "Special" Project for "Piccolo Cottolengo Don Orione" orphanage in Tortona
Intro about the opening
On 9th February 2008, the Music Therapy room at the Cottolengo orphanage in memory of John Travers was officially handed over. Jennie, Robert, David and Joanna Travers joined us and we had a great time together with the children, the nuns, the carers, the educators and the volunteers from the orphanage. In addition the music therapist who helped us design the project joined us to introduce the room and the concepts behind it during the opening speech. A press release was issued on the same day and resulted in an unexpectedly high coverage in the local and national newspapers and magazines.
How it all started
Harry Farthing, head of C&W Italian operations, visited the Piccolo Cottolengo orphanage in Tortona, South of Milan following the introduction by colleague Silvia Spadoni, to assess if we could assist through the Schools Around The World programme. Whilst it did not meet the more typical profile of a school that could be adopted by SATW Harry Farthing was keen to help them.
Piccolo Cottolengo
At the Piccolo Cottolengo there are 40 or so children who have been either abandoned by their family or hospitalised by parents who alone are unable to provide their children the intensive assistance they need. Hospitals throughout Italy are connected with the Cottolengo since it is one of only a few structures that can cope with accommodating and assisting on a continuous basis seriously handicapped children.
The majority of the children are blind and cannot talk due to serious mental deficiency. Most of them cannot walk, they live in wheel chairs and some are fed by tube-delivered nutrition and their breathing is assisted. They do not have long lives.
The assistance these children receive allows them to be fed, cleaned and nursed. Whilst there, talking with the carers, they explained that sound and music are really the strongest links that these children have with life. A young blind girl who had suffered from terrible family violence only re-established a connection with the others thanks to being calmed by music.
A proposal to help: The Music Therapy Room
A dream that the educators and nuns at Cottolengo cherished was the realisation of a "music therapy room" which the children could benefit from. Harry Farthing acknowledged that Schools Around The World could turn this need into a reality and furnish and supply such a room properly.
Harry set up a team including architects from the C&W Project Management team and people from staff who together, according to their different skills and competencies, followed the project from the beginning to the end. The contribution from some of our major suppliers proved fundamental to turn into reality what has really been a special project. Most of funds for the project were in fact raised via the generous donations from clients of C&W in Italy which substantially added on to the initial funds approved by the SATW trustees.
In order to properly design and equip the room the C&W team met a music therapist, Walter Binello, who introduced us to "music therapy" and suggested us to equip the room following the Snoezelen technique for controlled multisensory stimulation. It is used for people with (severe) mental disabilities, and involves exposing them to a soothing and stimulating environment, the "snoezelen room". These rooms are specially designed to deliver stimuli to various senses, using lighting effects, colour, sounds, music, scents, etc. The combination of different materials on the walls may be explored using tactile senses, and the floor may be adjusted to stimulate the sense of balance.
The project was completed within 5 weeks in time for Christmas. The room is now up and running and a training session is organised with the music therapist to help the educators, carers, doctors and nurses to utilise the room to the full benefit of the children.
