Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
cohesive harmonies
musicians without borders: 2025 call-out
Musicians Without Borders in collaboration with Leeds School of Arts present a 5-day “Welcome Notes” training programme. We are looking for facilitators and co-creators working across music and performing arts to participate in this unique training opportunity.
For 25 years, Musicians Without Borders (MWB) has been using music as a tool for personal, social, and political change. For over 2 decades, the organisation has developed a methodology that combines music pedagogy and community leadership.This methodology is used in post-conflict and conflict regions around the world to counter the destructive effects of war, violence, and displacement - in countries including Palestine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, across the Balkans, as well as with refugees on the move in the Netherlands and across Europe.
This training opportunity aims to share this methodology with facilitators and co-creators working across music and performing arts, to equip you with the skills and expertise to work with vulnerable people, with a focus on people undergoing migration, forced displacement, and refugee status. For more information please contact training@musicianswithoutborders.org or follow the links for Musicians Without Borders and Leeds School of Arts.
Information and details on applying
Musicians Without Borders’ “Welcome Notes” programme aims to strengthen the social inclusion of refugees in Europe through music. Currently the programme works in the Netherlands and the Balkans, with MWB trainers travelling to where refugees and migrants live in reception centres, asylum shelters, and safe houses. These spaces are often temporary, highly bureaucratic, and the people living there are often in a near-constant state of stress. The Welcome Notes program seeks to alleviate these traumatic experiences by providing safe spaces to create, to reconnect to one’s body and creativity, and to connect with one another in what can be highly isolating circumstances.
This training serves to further the mission of the Welcome Notes programme, by sharing Musicians Without Borders’ expertise to a growing community of music and arts practitioners who are able to provide care, support, and comfort to those who need it most. By the end of this training week, participants will be what MWB calls Music Leaders - those with the skills and knowledge to lead activities and workshops with empathy, competence, and confidence.
As a participant, you will be led throughout the week by two MWB trainers who will guide you to create workshop activities of your own design, to work with vulnerable people; to understand how music interacts with the body’s nervous system and how to use music-making to help calm and regulate people undergoing stress; and how workshop leaders themselves can work with their own body and personal practice to ensure they can create a safe environment for vulnerable people.
This training is a highly interactive and active experience, with plenty of opportunities for participants to experience workshop activities for themselves. We encourage participants to bring their own experiences and expertise to the training and to learn from each other. By the end of the week, you will be part of a new community of like-minded people that value the use of music for social and personal change.
While the training course will, to some extent, be tailored to the experience levels of the participants, course content will include:
1. Practical working principles that guide MWB's music leadership methodology: Safety,
inclusion, equality, creativity, and quality.
2. Principles of nonviolence: Music has the power to connect but in the wrong hands
can be used to set one group against another. Training will emphasise a clear set of
values behind practical work.
3. Biological, social and psychological effect of music: how music can influence human
behaviour on this level. Training will connect music to the nervous system and the ways
it can counter feelings of dysregulation caused by trauma, disconnection and extreme
experience.
4. Practical approaches to running various types of community music/outreach
workshops with a focus on working with people who have experienced displacement.
Participants will gain in-depth training on these principles and practical, guided
experience in their application.
We are looking for enthusiastic music and arts practitioners with a range of levels of experience in the community arts sector, and in particular in working with people directly affected by conflict or with lived experience of forced migration. Your practice may be emerging or well-established
(or somewhere in between). We would also like to receive applications from people who have a
desire to bring music practice into their existing community work.
We have up to 25 places on the course, and trainees will be selected according to their application.
The cost of the training course is £500. We are able to offer 5 funded places on the programme
(excluding travel expenses and accommodation), to applicants directly affected by conflict or
with lived experience of forced migration, and to students or staff of Leeds Becket University.
The learning will be collaborative and include group work.
The training will be delivered in English, but we welcome applications from people who have English as a secondary language.
The training features regular movement, however all activities will be tailored to the capabilities
and needs of the group. Those with mobility difficulties are encouraged to apply.
*Please note that completion of this course does not guarantee a role or position within
Musicians Without Borders, though we hope that participants will enjoy being a part of the MWB
global community and stay closely in touch with our team throughout their practice.
12-16 January 2026
All training will take place at The Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University City Campus,
Portland Way, Leeds, England, LS1 3PB
For further information to apply, go here.
