Aphasia group write song about their experiences

A group of Londoners with a brain condition that impacts their ability to speak, read, write and understand others have written a song about their experiences.

The Aphasia New Music Group, which is made up of people living with aphasia, musicians, and speech and language therapists, co-create music to raise awareness of the condition and support each other.

Aphasia is often caused by a stroke or brain injury. Tens of thousands of Londoners live with aphasia, according to the Stroke Association, and it can be very isolating.

Finn Beans, lead facilitator in the group and artistic director, said the song Listen was created to help people understand what it meant to live with the condition.

Dr Carolyn Bruce, speech and language therapist at University College London, works with the group.

"It's an acquired language difficulty and it happens as a result of brain injury, and it can affect all sorts of language skills," she said.

"It can affect reading or writing, speaking, understanding, and as a result it makes life very challenging for people after their stroke, and it stops them engaging in the life they had before that happened."

Colin Lyall was one of the group's first members.

"I had a stroke 13 years ago and I had aphasia," he said. "In the hospital I could say sort of yes and no.

"My intelligence was intact but I couldn't get any words right.

"So I went back home and I had speech and language therapy... and my words are kind of getting better, and I think now I'm not 100% but I still want to be better."

Lyall said his speech had improved but his reading and writing skills were not as good as they used to be.

What happened to him led him to set up a charity called Say Aphasia that supports people living with the condition. He said the music group was also critical to his development.

It is hoped that the song will counter misconceptions about aphasia, encourage connection and provide those with the condition with an outlet of shared understanding.

Beans said: "There's not a lot of understanding around what [aphasia] is, let alone what it means to live with it.

"We thought it'd be a really good chance to raise awareness.

"We don't always write a song just about what it's like to live with aphasia. We also explore sort of abstract concepts or incidental experiences that people have had.

"But with this song, Listen, we felt it was really important actually to have a clear message and to use it as a tool to raise awareness of aphasia, because typically in the UK most people haven't heard of it."

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