'Requiem Project' wins support from top film and music talent

This summer a host of major talent from the worlds of music and film will come together in a new project funded by Culture Online, part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Billy Bragg, Michael Nyman and Emily Young are amongst those who have given up their time to work in hospices on music, song and film with people facing long-term and terminal illness. The Rosetta Requiem, a cycle of songs and films forming the latest project from hospice charity Rosetta Life, enables people in palliative care to use artistic expression to share their hopes and fears at a time when words are simply not enough.
From July and running throughout the year, the Rosetta Requiem will showcase performances and live webcasts connecting people of all ages isolated by illness.
The first live webcast on July 6 will link London primary school children, Great Ormond Street Hospital and a South African children's hospice in a performance of their songs. Also that week, Orlando Gough and members of The Shout make the music for a hospice performance in Greenwich and David Matthews sees his composition for voice and strings premiered at Clapham's Trinity Hospice. These events begin the rollout of finished work being made available over the summer to the hospice community and audiences through performance, the website and the internet.
Other artists involved in the project around the country include composers and musicians Jarvis Cocker, Orlando Gough, David Matthews, Robin Walker, Julie Yount-Morgan and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, rapper Roots Manuva and filmmaker Asif Kapadia.
Lucinda Jarrett, Rosetta's Artistic Director, said: "Our ideas of death and dying are rooted in sadness and melancholy. We wanted to make this Requiem one that celebrates the hope, laughter and intense love of life experienced by the people we meet in the hospices."
Arts Minister David Lammy said: "The strength of Rosetta Requiem from Culture Online and Rosetta Life, lies in the genuine warmth of those people involved. Filmmakers, musicians and composers have given up their time and it's humbling to think of the courageous and open-hearted contribution of those people who face long-term and terminal illness. No one can fail to be moved by this incredible project."
The extensive website carries inspirational and moving personal stories, insight into how the artists and patients work together and the finished songs and films. Broadband links and internet messaging connect the hospice users and provide a vital networking path for patients, volunteers, relatives and friends from Penrith to Weymouth and from England to Africa.
The project is backed by Culture Online to help people from all parts of the community gain access to the arts through new media and technology. The children's webcast is being made possible with the support of MSN.
(GB/CD)