The Music Education Group is a student-run volunteer group at the University of York, and I have been volunteering as the mental health representative for the last two years. My role involves going into Mill Lodge, a mental health inpatient facility for adolescents. this experience has helped me see how people can use music as a way to escape for a bit, and I have worked hard to make my sessions fun and not too strenuous so that anyone can get involved. This type of volunteering has allowed me to improve time management and given me creative freedom when planning sessions. I have also managed to introduce the concept of a Christmas concert, which has not been done before, but was very popular when I put it on, and I hope that it can continue. during these sessions I have a variety of plans so that if one is more popular it can change, because of this I try and have a theme for the week so I have playlists that fit the theme and this can allow for quizzes or colouring which can often be more popular with kids who are shy. Along with the mental health sessions I also ran and assisted in primary school sessions, which included teaching the children how to play djembe drums and teach them some background about them. In these sessions, you are teaching kids anywhere from 6-10 and from classes of 10-40 students, so it is important to be confident and make sure that you are being listened too.