Sounds Of Change - Project

Children have very limited daily activities here. But making music, this project makes them very happy. It is something new for them. They know each other more because of this … it makes friendship. Every child comes from another country, there are many different cultures and stories. But music makes one. I find this the most beautiful part … In general, you don’t see people smiling here often, because of their history. But when we talk to the children about this musical project, they smile, they say “Oh music, we will play music”. It gives people a positive feeling. Children as well as their parents. If the child is happy, then the parents are happy as well.

Resident in a Dutch refugee centre

Established in 2016 in the Netherlands, Sounds of Change trains aid-workers, psychologists, teachers, therapists and musicians to use the power of music to transform the lives of people living in refugee camps, deprived areas and former war zones – places in the world where people have become alienated from themselves and from each other.

A BBT Community Grant in 2021 helped the Sounds of Change Academy to set up a Training of Trainers programme to teach 75 international musicians and mental health professionals ways of using music and other creative tools to help stabilise and relieve stress caused by trauma for children and adults in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and centres for asylum seekers in Amsterdam and Utrecht.

In 2025 BBT pledged another Community Grant of £45,000 over three years, which is supporting the continued development of the Training of Trainers course, including the creation of Trainers and Facilitators manuals which, as the programme develops, are crucial for the consolidation of the Sounds of Change methodology and assure quality, consistency and safety for both beneficiaries and practitioners.

The Training of Facilitators and Training of Trainers manuals are truly a major added value to our training. Participants now have a handbook, a clear and structured foundation to rely on. When during a training we need to spend more time on group wellbeing and safety, essential content can still be revisited in the handbook. In this way the quality of the training remains safeguarded.

Nour Hanna, senior SoC trainer and Arabic translator of the manuals

I truly enjoyed the process of co-creating the manual. Discussing it with others helped clarify the main ideas behind Sounds of Change and allowed us to focus on what was truly essential, while eliminating anything unnecessary. The combined knowledge and experience of our entire group of trainers made it both more valuable and better structured.

Kateryna Kudasheva, Ukraine-based practitioner

Photographs by Ali Alsheikh Khedr