Anna Macken

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Anna started working life at Maida Vale Studios with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, working alongside their Learning manager to deliver outreach projects in the local area, including the first ever BBC Out and About Prom. She then moved into BBC Learning, delivering educational resources and further outreach projects for a diverse range of BBC output - from Strictly to the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures. Following an exciting and varied time with the BBC Anna decided to pull her passions together (people and music), training to become a HCPC registered music therapist.

Anna now uses her professional psychological training and extensive musical toolkit to deliver both clinical music therapy interventions and meaningful music making projects to support the mental health and quality of life of children, young people and vulnerable adults across West Sussex. 

Anna is a music therapist with Waves Music Therapy, and is the charity's funding lead. She works in special educational settings and hospitals to support the mental health of children and young people in those settings, as well as in community settings, to support participants to find their voice and express themselves creatively in a way that is meaningful to them.

Anna believes passionately in access to arts opportunities for all children and young people - there should be no barriers, financial, physical or social - and that access to creative and expressive arts should be a mandatory part of educational life for current and future generations, especially given the crisis in mental health support for our children currently. Children and young people learn what they live - they need access to expressive and freely creative arts opportunities to make sense of their worlds and the world around them; to get to know themselves and to realise who and how they would like to be as they develop and grow.