The Trust is a charitable organisation that uses Music to understand complex social relationships and to connect people of different communities, ages and cultures. 

It focuses on music and movement as a key to empower individuals and unlock creativity through a variety of uniquely designed, research-based initiatives, drawing from its high-level musical, medical and scientific knowledge and experience.

Set in 7 acres of idyllic rolling Sussex countryside and surrounded by unspoilt woods and fields, MMST’s events and meetings offer creative inspiration, rest and rejuvenation. The Old Farmhouse is a fine 16th-century listed house full of charm and history. Five generations of the family of the great English poet, Shelley, lived here.

Situated within beautiful grounds and historic buildings, The Music Mind Spirit Trust’s Young Artist Musical Ambassadors (YAMA — Music Mind Spirit Trust), British Opera Academy (British Opera* Academy UK (BOA UK)— Music Mind Spirit Trust) and SongTrees Programmes provide uniquely designed projects to develop musical gifts and enhance creative potential. 

The Old Farmhouse was acquired by the Robertsons in 1997 to realise their dream of creating a quiet and beautiful place that could be developed into a centre dedicated to music and the arts – where visitors from around the world can come to experience an enrichment and healing of their mind, body and spirit.

Music Mind Spirit is the crystallisation of the life experience to date of Chika (and the late Paul Robertson) as musicians, teachers and idealists. The charity’s aims continue with Chika and MMST’s eminent Trustee and Advisory Boards.

Meet the MMST Team

Dr Chika Robertson  PhD, MMus, BA, honARAM - CEO

Dr Chika Robertson, CEO of the Music Mind Spirit Trust, is professor of violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London and served as an international Diploma Examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. She is much in demandglobally as a music adjudicator, workshop presenter, project director and conference speaker.

Chika has recorded for eminent musicians (incl. Adams, Henze, Knussen, Lutoslawski, Marriner, Pärt, Rattle, Tavener & Tippett) as soloist and chamber musician with world-class ensembles including the London Sinfonietta & Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.  She premiered numerous seminal works and performed in many styles with artists including Peter Donohoe, Shirley Bassey and Ella Fitzgerald.

A multiple prizewinner with fellowships to Aspen, Tanglewood & the Mozarteum, she was a teaching assistant at USC, concertmaster/operations manager at the Schoenberg Institute and LA Chamber Players, and recorded in the Hollywood film studios. Raised in Spokane, WA, she continued her training with scholarships to study with Alan Bodman, Eudice Shapiro and Dorothy Delay.

Her present work in health, wellbeing and recovery forges new career paths for Young Artist Musical Ambassadors (YAMA). Through MMST’s musical mentorship and leadership programme, the Royal Academy of Music YAMAs learn to design and deliver bespoke musical programmes.

Chika is passionate about using innovative interdisciplinary methods to benefit music and medicine.  Dr Robertson co-presented the ‘Connection through Music’ online global concert series with Prof Nigel Osborne, the NHS and X-System throughout the pandemic lockdown to bridge diverse ages, styles and cultures together.  Using MMST’s unique SongTrees methodology, she is currently co-creating an exciting intergenerational music and ecology project for schools and communities, as well as mentorship programmes linking musicians with all generations, particularly seniors and those living with dementia.

MMST Trustees and Management 

The Trust uses Music to understand complex social relationships and to connect people of different communities, ages and cultures.  It focuses on music as a key to empower individuals and unlock creativity through a variety of uniquely designed, research-based initiatives, drawing from its high level musical, medical and scientific knowledge and experience. 

The MMST benefits from an eminent Board of Trustees and Management Committees, who actively provide a wealth of musical, scientific, educational and legal knowledge, incorporating principles of cultural leadership and business acumen.

MMST Trustees: Prof. Paul R. Grob MD FRCGP (Chairman); Mr Dominic Alldis; Dr. Peter Fenwick MB BChir (cantab) DTM FRC psych; Ambassador Karl-Erik Norrman; Prof. Nigel Osborne MBE, FRCM; Mr Martin Redfern; Mrs Neena Vivash; Mr Larry Westland CBE. Chief Executive: Dr Chika Robertson.

MMST Cultural, Scientific & Medical Advisory Board: Robert Ashcroft, Principal at Hudson Morris Associates; Dr Peter Fenwick, MB BChir (cantab) DTM FRCPsych, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist and Neurophysiologist; Prof Paul Grob MD FRCGP; David Lorimer, Scientific & Medical Network and Character Scotland; Dr Lyudmila Nurse, PhD, Research Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford; Prof Mark Ross Clark; Mary Shek; Prof Nigel Osborne, MBE, FRCM; Jonathan Willcocks, conductor & educationalist; Prof Julian West, Head of Open Academy, Royal Academy of Music; Prof John Zeisel, founder of Artists for Alzheimer’s.

MMST Associates, Supporters and Partners: Arts Council England; Arts & Business South East; A & R Associates Ltd; Big Lottery Fund, Cedar Court Care Home (Cranleigh); Chances4Change; Cranleigh School; ENRI-East; European Cultural Parliament; Health Education Wessex; Kuumba Youth Music; Live Music Now; National Lottery; NHS; Oxford XXI; The Royal Academy of Music; Spokane Public Library and Holy Names Music Centre (USA); Stonehill House Care Home (Haddenham); The Wates Foundation; X-System Ltd; Youth Music. We would also like to acknowledge generous support from Rosie Brenan, Kent Ross, and the late Lewis L. Golden OBE JP FCA & Patrick Brenan OBE FCA. We are delighted to be supported by public funding by the National Lottery Community Fund.

Registered Charity No. 1110646

Registered Company No. 05263552

MMST Partners & Associates

Bookham & Harrison Farms, a delightful family owned business on the Surrey-Sussex borders, was crowned Sussex Food Producer of the Year 2018 with their international award-winning cheeses. In this exciting new partnership, creative public events are presented in partnership with MMST in its popular coffee shop: The Milk Churn was featured in the Guardian’s Top Ten Places to eat in the countryside.

Partner Care Homes Cedar Court (Cranleigh, Surrey) and Stonehill House (Haddenham, Buckinghamshire) are residential care homes where the Young Artist Musical Ambassadors (YAMA) present interactive programmes of live and bespoke recorded music, designed by leading professional musicians and the residents themselves, in partnership with X-System Ltd and Live Music Now.

BBC Music Day celebrates the power of music to change lives with events across the UK and broadcasts on TV, Radio and digital. Last year BBC Music Day programmes reached over 13 million viewers on TV, 14 million on radio and trended on Twitter throughout the day. The initiative united 100 external partners who delivered over a thousand live music events, which featured in over 100 different BBC programmes with Ambassadors including Kylie, Nile Rodgers and Blossoms; https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/egrz3d )

Character Scotland is an educational charity formed in 2009 by a group of academics, educationalists, entrepreneurs and parents for the purpose of promoting the development of character in young people and intentional character education in schools. SongTrees Young Artist Musical Ambassadors are benefitting from Character Scotland’s global programme, ‘Inspiring Purpose’, under the guidance of David Lorimer.

Royal Society of Public Health; Health Education England – Wessex: MECC (Making Every Contact Count) supports organisations to maximise on the opportunity they have with the public in promoting health and enabling them to make changes to improve their health and wellbeing. Health Education England – Wessex provides additional support in delivering MECC to SongTrees’ Young Artist Musical Ambassadors.

The European Cultural Parliament (ECP) is a membership organisation for citizens of Europe involved in the fields of arts and culture. Its purpose is to strengthen the role of cultural and artistic ideas in the debate on the future of Europe. Its work incorporates letters for dialogue, discussions and debate on crucial and burning issues of importance for European co-operation. The ECP offers a forum for regular debate as well as a meeting place, where networks, ideas and initiatives are created.

Kuumba Youth Music is a music organization working with young people of all abilities who wish to progress their musical ability and understanding. Based in the East End of London, the organization is led by and serves an ethnically diverse population.

Live Music Now is a UK-wide initiative set-up by Sir Yehudi Menuhin and Ian Stoutzker in 1977. Every year they deliver thousands of interactive programmes into care homes, hospitals, healthcare settings and schools throughout the year, providing training and employment to young professional musicians. Live Music Now musicians are mentor/models for the SongTrees YAMA Programme.

The Royal Academy of Music is an institution with a global reputation for excellence and innovation. The oldest conservatoire in the UK, the Royal Academy can with confidence claim to embody and provide the highest quality music tuition across Europe and the rest of the world. The Academy has a strong commitment to expanding music participation through working with other organisations and in community environments. SongTrees’s main cohort of Young Artist Musical Ambassadors are from the Primary and Junior Academy, Royal Academy of Music, and its Young Professional YAMAs are from the University of Oxford and Royal Academy of Music.

The Spokane Public Library is an award-winning public library system in the USA. Its 6 libraries are known nationally for its unique programming, cultural outreach and commitment to social needs. Spokane is the cultural centre of the Inland Northwest region (Washington, Idaho, Montana and lower British Columbia). Set in a vast territory within the beautiful Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains, it serves numerous Native American tribal nations.

MMST works in close partnership with the Spokane Public Library and Holy Names Music Centre,

X-System, the brain-child of Prof Nigel Osborne and the late Prof Paul Robertson, has developed cutting-edge technology which accurately and reliably categorises music by its physical effect on the autonomic nervous system. It does this by modelling the function of the lower brain to predict the effect of music on the arousal of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The technology, known as the the Innate Neurophysiological Response to Music (INRM), has significant benefits for health and wellbeing, particularly when utilised within MMST’s Young Artist Musical Ambassadors’ unique care-home programme of interactive live and bespoke recorded music.

Together with Chika as co-founders of the Trust, Paul focused his energies in developing activities of the Music Mind Spirit Trust.

For nearly forty years the late Professor Paul Robertson performed throughout the world as founder member and leader of the internationally renowned Medici String Quartet. They recorded and broadcast prolifically and appeared at International Festivals across four continents, as well as at MMST events at The Old Farmhouse. He drew on this top level performance experience, together with his profound knowledge of Music and the Brain, to create unique insights into our innate ‘hardwired’ systems of Integrated Intelligence.

In his work Paul brought together analytic ‘cognitive’ systems thinking with more intuitive ‘subjective’ musical experience, to illumine the complex contemporary issues around Leadership, Organisational Intelligence, Learning and Creativity etc. Alongside a busy international career of public speaking, corporate presentations and consultations, he wrote and broadcast. His original and passionate delivery (which always included an element of musical performance and illustration) took him into many different arenas.

In 2008 he began to suffer severe health problems and performed only for special occasions. In addition to being a Visiting Professor in Music and Medicine to the Peninsula Medical School (where he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Medicine degree), he was a Visiting Fellow to Green Templeton College, Oxford; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; member of the European Cultural Parliament and an Associate of the RSM.

Until his health problems curtailed travelling and other professional engagements, he was a Visiting Professor in Art and Leadership to the Copenhagen Business School, a Cultural Leader of the World Economic Forum, Davos and National Endowment of Science, Technology and the Arts, as well as for other international organisations.

To delve deeper into the work of The Medici Quartet, Paul and his many cutting-edge projects, please visit the ‘Explore’ section of this website.

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