'Music gives emergency workers a sense of belonging'

"So, I live a bit of a double life," says Seb Valentine, whose day-to-day job and out-of-work passion couldn’t be more different.

The detective sergeant worked as an opera singer before joining the Metropolitan Police.

He says music was his "first passion" and pursued it at London's Royal College of Music before becoming an opera singer but joined the police in 2011 after struggling to earn a living.

In 2015 he decided to combine his career and musical talents to create the Blue Light Symphony Orchestra which is entirely made up of emergency service workers, as well as the wider NHS and military.

"After being in the police for a while I really wanted to get back to music," he said.

"And I started looking for other people in the emergency services who are musicians and I found quite a lot of people so I decided to try and get the orchestra together.

"It’s really great, there are so many people who say it’s like no other orchestra they’ve played in because everyone has that shared experience of being in the emergency services that they bring to it."

From a modest start with just 10 members, the orchestra is now 65 strong.

It has grown through word of mouth as well as by sending messages out to the different emergency services.

Mr Valentine says people really appreciate coming to play music in a safe space where they know they are going to be welcomed as people who are in the emergency services.

He transferred to Surrey Police in 2017 and has continued to build the orchestra which is open to blue light workers from anywhere in the country.

It doesn't meet as regularly as a typical orchestra due to the shift patterns emergency service workers do but Mr Valentine tries to get members together where possible.

He said: "People love that they meet others from different emergency services who they’ve not met before but with shared traumatic experience of going to the sorts of incidents we go to but also that shared musicality as well.

"It really does bond people together."

"Also, you have to remember a lot of people in the emergency services, if they go somewhere socially they don’t like to say what they do so coming together like this means that people can bring their whole selves to it and be really relaxed and be who they are."

The orchestra is also a registered charity with the mission to improve the mental health of emergency service workers through music and music therapy.

It recently performed its second ever concert at Smith Square Hall in Westminster to tie in with World Mental Health Day.

"Our aim is around mental health and helping people to have a space where they can come together safely and make music for their own mental wellbeing," he says.

"Music is fantastic for people’s mental health and to foster that sense of belonging."

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