Older carers play a vital yet often invisible role in sustaining families, communities, and health systems. Many provide continuous care with limited recognition or support, while simultaneously managing exhaustion, social isolation, and their own physical and emotional health challenges. Despite their immense contribution, their lived experiences, humour, resilience, emotions, and aspirations are seldom acknowledged or meaningfully represented.

Through participatory music workshops with carers attending Newington Day Centre, this project, led by the Oh Yeah! Music Centre and supported by the team, will collaboratively create an original song centred on hope, dignity, and joy, shaped directly by carers’ own stories and voices. Working alongside musicians, researchers, and community partners, the project will explore how music can function as a powerful medium for storytelling, social connection, emotional expression, and collective healing, while affirming the value and visibility of carers within society.

The final composition will be professionally recorded and preserved within a digital archive celebrating the voices and experiences of carers in Belfast. At its core, the project recognises that research is not always about statistics or publications; sometimes it is about creating meaningful spaces where people feel heard, valued, and seen.