Throughout our research we looked into different accounts of people who are Syrian refugees to give us a sense of what was really happening what we read was shocking and horrific. We read how living conditions were bare and that people were living on old mattresses or on a concrete floor these people knew they had to get away from there homes or they would be tortured or killed like they had seen happen to friends and family.

While we were looking at the refugee situation we came across something called Refugee Music project as we all sat there and watched the video of a man singing as another breaks down in tears you can’t help but feel emotional for these people who are in a situation that they have no say over as we looked further into this we found that for some people this was a way of coping with what was going on around them

We saw how a Syrian refugee rock band had turned their experience into a tour to tell their story the reason they left Syria was because the drummer of the band was killed and they knew it was no place for them to be.

What is even more upsetting is seeing the children that this war has forced to run away from Syria we saw a child who was trying to make a living by playing music on the streets another child who was using music as a therapy was singing to other children in the refugee camp.

The music project was set up to show people videos and listen to music from musicians caught in the conflict this really helped us as it gave us a feel for the music we wanted for our piece.

A video that we have decided to feature in our piece is called I am a crying for sham features a boy singing and the video shows all the pain and heartache that is going on in the refugee camps.

To look at traditional Syrian music we looked at different traditional folk songs that we might add to our show. We found a composer who studied in Syria before the war started and she is trying to tell the story of the Syrian refugees through her music and show you who they really are.

Throughout all of our research we have been looking at music for our physical scenes we went through a lot of emotional music one that particularly stuck out for us was a song called “Cold” by George Mendez.

In our performance we wanted to show how a war can effect the children and how they cope with war and refugee camps we needed a piece of audio to go over this and we found a piece called “Where have all the children gone” which really enriched the scene.

Most of these videos of music had scenes from the refugee camps these really help as we had a vision of what we are trying to re create on the stage.

As we knew what scenes we were having we knew we wanted to add a soundtrack to the back of some of them we looked through so many different sounds of thunder and storm sounds until we found the right one for the atmosphere we wanted to create.