Casestudy G4V-Wales

Guitars for Vets (G4V):

G4V is an American non-profit organisation dedicated to providing relief to struggling veterans through the healing power of music and the community (G4V, 2019). The organisation was started because the founder, Patrick Nettesheim, a guitar instructor, started working with a Vietnam veteran who found that guitar lessons were appropriate for veterans in allowing self-expression and positive human interaction. A G4V guitar instruction program was developed with the aim of providing struggling veterans with physical injuries, PTS and other emotional problems with a unique therapeutic alternative (G4V, 2019). G4V provide weekly individual lessons so that students can learn at their own pace and monthly group sessions to establish a community atmosphere. Once a student has completed the initial 10 lessons of the programme the student is awarded their own guitar to continue within the groups. In Dillingham (2011), a study with the US Department of Veterans Affairs carried out a 6-week program with 40 US veterans suffering from PTS. The veterans participated in one individual guitar lesson per week and one monthly group guitar session facilitated by experienced instructors in partnership with G4V. The veterans were aged between 22 and 76. According to Dillingham (2011), the results were remarkably successful, showing positive benefits for the 6-week intervention. The primary outcomes included a 21% improvement in PTS symptoms, a 27% reduction in symptoms of depression and a 37% increase in feelings of a better quality of life.

G4V is now nationwide in North America and its success is relevant to the UK because its program has been adopted by the charity, The Friends of the Royal British Legion Band of Wales in 2021 and supported by the Armed forces Covenant Fund. According to its president, during the lockdown, with the difficulties of teaching orchestral instruments compared to the relative cost of guitars the charity investigated taking music to veterans to promote wellbeing and created a partnership to host G4V and create G4V-Wales. This is also a non-profit organisation that uses the healing power of music with veterans. G4V- Wales recruits participants by going to visit veteran's welfare hubs and promoting it from within rather than advertising and hoping they will come to them. Members can be of all ages, ranks and nationalities as long as they have served at least one day of military service. The participants can receive tuition online or in person with a group. When a participant passes the grade 1 exam, funded by G4V-Wales they are invited to become support tutors. Its president tells us it now has 12 groups and over 80 members, it also has over 230 followers on Facebook and ‘If playing the guitar with G4V has helped tame any of a veteran’s demons we have done our job. (MIN, 2022).