Play & See: Hospital Edition

For years my performance practice has centred on my live-visuals system, reacting in real time in response to what I play. In 2025 I started asking what would happen if anyone could try it, not just watch. The result was the first iteration of Play & See, which premiered at Arnolfini Bristol.

Through support from Bath Spa’s Studio Innovation Fund, I partnered with Art at the Heart of the RUH and their musician-in-residence, Frankie Simpkins.

We were also fortunate to cross paths with Designability , who brought their accessibility-design expertise to build the physical housing: a unit that can be wheeled around the ward and reads as welcoming to children rather than clinical.

Play & See: Hospital Edition is a portable, single-user experience built for inpatients with no prior musical experience. You can play it with a keyboard, or wirelessly through a Skoog cube or iPad, making it usable for patients who’d struggle with a traditional keyboard.

I’ve been piloting the unit on the RUH Children’s Ward, and the feedback from patients and their families has been fantastic.

I love it a lot.
—Reuben, 9

Therapeutic Framework

“Play & See” is a hugely impressive project that has the potential to impact positively on young people’s confidence & self-esteem, emotional processing & expression and general wellbeing. In a hospital setting it can also offer crucial opportunities for creativity and even interaction & relationship-building.
—Jim Cornick, music therapist

Play & See’s Hospital Edition has been assessed by a licensed music therapist to have the potential for several positive therapeutic outcomes:

  • Engagement could provide positive impacts on participants’ confidence, self-esteem and general mood & wellbeing.
  • Developing relationships through interaction with others - e.g. playing in pairs could help to develop relationships. This could also help decrease feelings of isolation and loneliness.
  • Focusing on engagement and play could help participants to regulate behaviour & emotions and express feelings - musically, as well as verbally when explaining how the experience makes them feel.
  • Motor skills and coordination: play could help participants with a range of physical difficulties to develop strength, coordination and flexibility.
  • Levels of concentration and focus could improve through strong motivation to play and explore.
  • Creativity: the experience offers participants the opportunity to be creative and challenge themselves.

We’re now talking to other hospitals and organisations about hosting their own unit — if that’s you, get in touch .

Play & See is proud to acknowledge development support from The Studio Innovation Fund 2026: