[Case Study] Idol Performers Visited Our Lab: Exploring the Possibilities of Charity-Based ‘Outreach Cultural Care’
Yesterday afternoon, our office was buzzing in a way it never usually is.
The reason was two very special visitors who walked through our door wearing neat, attractive school uniforms and bright smiles—poised and radiant even in front of a camera. Starting today, these two young performers, both idol performers signed with the entertainment agency Enter One, are officially serving as brand ambassadors for The Chaeum Care!
Enter One (CEO Park Jong-gyu), an entertainment agency specializing in idol performers, has partnered with our organization, SE Empower Social Cooperative, since last year as a cultural care partner of The Chaeum Care. Together, we have run a dance education program for children from low-income households in the local community. Professional instructors from Enter One volunteer their teaching services, and children at a local community child center are the beneficiaries.
Elementary school student Choi Ji-hyun, who participated in The Chaeum Care’s charitable activities last year, has now been appointed as a brand ambassador and hopes to expand this cultural care work even further. (She is also scheduled to release her debut album this October!) Middle school student Kim Ji-yul, a past winner of the Sopa Bang Jeong-hwan Children’s Song Festival and a Bang Jeong-hwan scholarship recipient, has continued releasing albums and performing, and has recently expanded her activities into musical theatre.
SE Empower and Enter One are now planning a cultural care initiative that goes beyond one-way giving—one in which young performers with professional artistic skills participate directly and share cultural experiences with others. The initiative is currently being developed step by step. As relevant overseas examples, we would like to introduce the UK’s Live Music Now and Chickenshed Theatre.
Live Music Now, UK (Small-Scale Live Music, Outreach Emotional Care)
1. Program Definition and Background
This case can be defined as a charity-based, small-scale, participatory cultural care model: donations and sponsorship from citizens and foundations are used to discover and train emerging musicians, who then travel into local communities to bring high-quality live music directly to people.
A ‘charity-based, participatory cultural care model’ is a virtuous public-benefit distribution model. On one side, funds are raised from well-intentioned donors and foundations; on the other, emerging musicians receive professional training and practical performance experience. They then travel in small units—one or two musicians at a time—to older adults with limited mobility and vulnerable populations, offering personalized emotional and cultural care.
Live Music Now was founded in the UK in 1977 by violinist Yehudi Menuhin and Ian Stoutzker. It combined two goals into a single model—nurturing musicians early in their careers and bringing the joy of live music to everyone—by operating both a recruitment and training program for emerging musicians and an outreach performance program for care homes, hospitals, and other settings serving vulnerable populations. Today, as a registered charity (Registered Charity No. 273596), it trains and employs roughly 320 emerging professional musicians each year, bringing live music to more than 55,000 people annually.
2. Core Mechanism and Program Structure
Live Music Now operates on a ‘residency’ model, in which emerging musicians make regular visits to care homes and hospitals to deliver small-scale live sessions.
① A structure for training and assigning emerging musicians: Rather than offering one-off performances, the program combines individual donations with funding sources such as the National Lottery to build a sustainable system that continuously selects, trains, and assigns emerging musicians to community venues.
② Mobility through small units: Rather than sending a full orchestra, one or two emerging musicians visit each care home regularly for 8 to 12 sessions, providing intensive, personalized music care tailored to each resident’s preferences and condition.
③ Building the capacity of care workers: After every session, the musicians share feedback with care workers at the care home and train them to use music in their own care practices. This allows the effects to continue after the residency ends and helps sustain the program’s charitable ecosystem.
3. What Live Music Now Suggests
① Nurturing emerging talent while developing service providers
Where conventional cultural care often leaves local children in the position of passive recipients of education, the UK case shows a different structure: emerging artists are identified and given professional training, and then grow into service providers who use their abilities to deliver value to the community. That said, most Live Music Now musicians are professionals in their early-to-mid twenties who have recently graduated from music college, making them somewhat older than children and adolescents. The underlying direction—‘build capacity, then share it’—is the same, but this case does not necessarily demonstrate a pathway in which a former child beneficiary grows into a service provider.
② Small-scale, high-quality care rooted in the local community
Without a concert hall or a large budget, a small unit of one or two musicians making regular visits to a care home demonstrates the potential of mobile, closely tailored care. Moving beyond one-off performances, 8 to 12 regular sessions deliver high-quality music care personalized to each resident, offering deep comfort and emotional connection to older adults with limited mobility—a small-scale, high-quality care model. According to Live Music Now’s own reporting, these regular sessions have a positive effect not only on residents but also on the working environment and care culture of the entire care home.
Chickenshed Theatre, UK (Intergenerational Outreach Theatre and Care)
1. Program Definition and Background
This case can be defined as a charity-based, participatory cultural care model, supported by citizens and local charitable foundations, in which children and young people from a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances build direct relationships with older adults in the community through theatre and participate in caring relationships with them. Whereas Live Music Now follows a structure in which professionals travel to provide a service, Chickenshed is an intergenerational co-creation model in which older adults and young people build a production together.
Chickenshed is an inclusive theatre company founded in 1974 in Southgate, London. It supports around 15,000 people each year, including children and young people facing disabilities or difficult circumstances, and states that more than 60% of them have experienced isolation due to physical or mental health issues, bullying, disability, or caring responsibilities. Since 2017, the organization has run an intergenerational outreach program called ‘The Space Between Us,’ visiting care homes and local organizations for older adults, such as Age UK Enfield, to deliver performances and workshops. In 2025, it received the award in the Intergenerational Team category at the InCommon Age Friendly Awards.
2. Core Mechanism and Program Structure
① Operating through local partnerships: Rather than relying on a formalized funding structure based on local government or corporate funding, the program is planned and run in partnership with local organizations for older adults, such as Age UK Enfield, with funding secured through charitable giving.
② A co-creation approach: Rather than offering a one-way performance, productions are created by adapting older adults’ own memories and stories together with them. In the 2023 project ‘The Lost Records Project,’ participants ranging from age 8 to 85 spent six months creating a production together and continued related activities in care homes and dementia support organizations.
③ Building ongoing relationships: Rather than a single performance, the work runs as a months-long project, so older adults and young people meet repeatedly and build relationships over time.
3. What Chickenshed Suggests
Intergenerational co-creation rather than a one-way performance
Older adults are not passive recipients but active participants who help bring their own memories and experiences to the stage—a cultural care model that points in a different direction from Live Music Now. This approach, in which multiple generations from age 8 to 85 spend months building a story together, suggests a model in which the relationship between generations is itself a form of care, moving beyond a one-way model in which care is simply provided to recipients.
[About the Author]
Dr. Kim Sung-Kee (Social Welfare)
Director, The Chaeum Care Biz Lab
Chairman, SE Empower Social Cooperative
Email: skknd@naver.com
Comments
Post a Comment