Aim and Impact
Music for Elm is storytelling. A way to communicate our thoughts, feelings, experiences to an audience to create meaningful connection.
As musicians who have grown up in a time where our Western society's connection to nature, ourselves and our collective senses of community seems to have fragmented more and more, we approach our music-making with consideration of the part we/our creations might play in our local community and the wider world. Therefore, it is important to us that any projects we take on or collaborate on are within some sort of alignment with the values we hold and the ways in which we hope to have impact, big or small.
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Some of the values we hold closely are reconnection with nature, reconnection with each other, honouring of and reconnection with the land, with biodiversity, with community care networks, with innate playfulness and honest creativity, storytelling and systems change.
Through songs and stories, we aim to provoke thought, to continue the folk oral tradition whilst also creating new and unconventional sounds, and to catalyse connection, whether interpersonal, intrapersonal, or with the more than human world.
"Their music is grounded and often connected to nature, leaving a lasting sense of calm and freshness that you would find lying on a bed of moss in the forest."
Erin Lee (Forests In Motion event organiser)
We have loved sharing our music at local Land Workers Alliance events in South Wales, and continue to contribute our music to fundraise for Palestine through Medical Aid for Palestine and Young Musicians for Palestine.
We’re currently enjoying contributing to our local growing folk music scene in Leeds and the surrounding area.
Some of the songs and arrangements by Ellie Lewis have been sung by choirs and groups of people building community and connection and will soon be available to access if you’re wanting to teach these songs.