and solve what is becoming now and almost boring statement, year after year, as we report a growing number of people who have been forced to leave their homes. and it is quite sombre when we look at the state of the international community and the bitter disputes between the two superpowers, the united states and china, and many issues, and the difficulties of even the alliances in the western world. it is hard to see unity in the international community around any of this agenda that you are describing. we certainly live in challenging times and times in which we see multilateralism be increasingly attacked. but there is no other option. this is truly a global issue. solutions can only be found if all countries put their hands to it. i would also like to add, since

in the rich countries there is a rhetoric that suggests refugees try to come to our society to benefit from our standards of living. the reality is that it is a global issue thatis reality is that it is a global issue that is uneven a —— unevenly distributed. over a0%, over a that is uneven a —— unevenly distributed. over40%, overa half never leave the country and remain within the countries and of the others, or those who do become refugees, 85% remain in developing countries. very few people come to rich countries. it is important we lay to rest some of the rhetoric thatis lay to rest some of the rhetoric that is being used, also than to justify restrictive measures. we are going to have to leave it there but we ta ke going to have to leave it there but we take to heart your message that every action counts.

we started off in a reasonably dry notebook rain is gathering. cloud are spreading up through wales and into the midlands for the afternoon but few and far between, highest values of 22 degrees. not quite as warm in the northern isles where we keep low cloud, mist and fog during the day but later on this afternoon and into the evening, the cloud, wind and rain starts division from the west. it will bring a spell of wet weather as it moves steadily eastwards. about a an inch of rain for some places but with the cloud, wind and around, temperatures holding up. that rain clearing away from scotland and eastern england first thing to some sunny spells gci’oss first thing to some sunny spells across england and wales, more frequent shopper showers likely into the far north and west. top temperatures for sunday afternoon,

14-22d. hello, this is bbc news with carrie grace. the headlines: uk ministers promise a review of the 2 metre social distancing rule will ‘conclude within days', which could make it easier for pubs and restaurants to open next month. passengers arriving at uk airports may soon be able to pay for a coronavirus test and avoid 1a days in quarantine. the white house tries to fire the prosecutor investigating donald trump's associates — but he's refusing to step down. brazil becomes only the second country in the world to report more than a million cases of coronavirus. hope in the time of corona — climate campaigner greta thunberg tells us the crisis proves governments can take dramatic action. if you use that logic, it changes the discussion and the debate.

now on bbc news, philippa thomas hears from people around the world about their extraordinary experiences during the pandemic and how covid—19 has changed their lives. welcome to coronavirus: your stories, a programme about how covid—19 is changing the lives of people around the world. i'm philippa thomas. this week, we're looking at live music and the virus, about how live music has the power to help some of the most vulnerable, and how, as an art form, live music making has itself been hit hard by the lockdown. now, whether it's live—streamed

concerts, or neighbours singing together from their balconies, we've seen communities all over the world turn to music during this crisis. at the same time, the future of professional music is in question. we'll hear about the damage done by the global lockdown from the founder of an outstanding orchestra for black and minority ethnic musicians, an ensemble that is now also feeling the pain from the latest examples of racial injustice. but we'll start with the ways in which music is helping people to cope, especially those who already had reason to feel vulnerable or lonely even before the pandemic, individuals dealing with isolation, disability or dementia. from toronto in canada, we'rejoined by krista samborsky, who is a care home director who has designated her music therapists as essential workers.

and from wellington in new zealand, christine o'sullivan has multiple sclerosis, and she can talk about the power of singing during lockdown. along with ms, i realised i was vulnerable, and didn't really want to put myself in danger of getting coronavirus. i was diagnosed with secondary progressive ms in 2005, and the symptoms have gradually progressed over the years, mainly mobility, fatigue, lack of strength, and others. and over the years, as it's progressed, things were changing, and i was no longer able to do the things i used to be able to do, leading a fairly active life. and i realised i couldn't control the change itself, but i started thinking maybe i could take charge of the changes that were happening, and focus on what i could do to try and be happy, fit and healthy. sojust trying to manage it,

trying to take charge of the change, rather than being out of control, really. just helping me to get back in it. have you been able to share that kind of advice with people who might have been a bit panicky about going into lockdown, what you're saying about "control what you can"? yep, very much. i've got quite a few friends who were quite concerned when lockdown was coming about how they're going to cope, and i said, look, you just have to accept it. you really can't do much about it. krista, at 147 elder street, you have to look after a large group of residents who have dementia. it is particularly difficult. what did you think when news of the pandemic arrived, and you realised lockdown is going to happen? when i first heard about the severity of the pandemic, and that we were headed in the direction of lockdown, i think my first thought was i hope that we can weather this storm, and come out the other

side unscathed. i was so fearful of the thought that we may lose some of our residents to covid. and i guess you had to make phone calls to family members who were used to coming in and out, to say, look, you can't be here. absolutely. at 147 elder street, we really support family relationships, and we encourage family to visit and be a part of our community. and on the day where myself and my ceo had to make the phone calls to family members informing them that they are no longer able to come visit their loved ones, was an extremely difficult day for me. ijust wanted to continue to promote their familial relationships, because i knew that this would be difficult for them, but also for our residents. so i tried to come up with as many strategies as i could, how throughout lockdown i could promote their relationships. and one was through facetime,

facetime phone calls, and another way was promoting whatever in—person relationships i could still maintain, like with my music therapists. and anna, i heard you say, "here comes the birds." oh, did i? you did, and i liked that. so we're going to sing, "here comes the birds". 0h, 0k. # here comes the birds... we'll hear, from both of you now, what you have done. because christine in new zealand, i know your choirs, particularly the global ms choir, have been important in getting you through this. yes, singing has been a really important part of my life, towards my well—being, and i was concerned that we wouldn't be able to get singing. and so the singing actually gives me strength.

it helps me connect with my community. it's helped me connect with friends, with people, and just the enjoyment of actually going out and being with others, and just... you forget about disability when you're singing, and just — you're there. i belong to this community singing group, and i'm also involved very much in the... i initiated something called sing for ms on world ms day, and that has helped me connect with people, and just stepping out and getting into things. christine, we're going to share with our audience just a little of what happened for the global ms choir day, when you all pre—recorded, i think, but all your voices were brought together in this arrangement, and it was arranged by mark de—lisser. # for it won't be long till i'm going to need somebody to lean on.

# you can call on me, brother, when you need a hand. # we all need somebody to lean on... lean on me, and christine, what was it like in that moment, when that came together? oh, that was just magic. we all on zoom just started moving to music, and it wasjust magic. and mark was such a gentle choir director. he'd encourage us all to really get into it. and there were people from all over the world, 33 countries involved in that. so that was part of connecting not just in new zealand with singers, but with singers all around the world. and it was — just watching everyone's faces as they were doing it and hearing it for the first time was magic. krista, if we're talking about the magic of music, i know, as a trained art therapist, you know something about how music

actually reaches into the brain, deep into the brain. yes, so i am a registered dance movement therapist, and being a part of the creative arts therapies, we know that music is stored in a deeper part of the brain. so, when individuals with dementia engage with music therapy, they're actually accessing a deeper part of the brain, that often isn't affected by dementia. so this is why we see individuals with dementia be able to sing full songs. we see them be able to recite lyrics and engage in rhythm and tempo, when perhaps in the other parts of daily living, they may not be able to do simple tasks that they once were able to do. so music therapy really is such a wonderful tool at unlocking the individual with dementia, and allowing them to access memories that are a little bit deeper in their brain. what have you witnessed

during lockdown between your music therapists and some of your residents? what kind of moments could you share with us? mm—hm, so at 147 elder street, music therapy, art therapy, dance therapy, they're a very big part of our model. so our residents have already been exposed to this therapeutic relationship, but what i witnessed throughout this time of covid is that these relationships became deeper, and allowed the residents to truly express whatever feelings of loneliness, of isolation, of being scared, that they were going through. even though we tried our best to create and promote still a sense of community, we still had to physically distance our residents, which is something that they're not used to, and i witnessed through the music therapy relationships how residents who had asked simply why, why is this going on, they were able to express

themselves and really allow themselves to engage in some creativity and some agency through the music therapy sessions, be it in group, in small group, or in one—to—one. and they were really magical moments. and christine, just a final thought from you about vulnerability at a time of pandemic. has it been difficult to get to grips with the way the world has changed? yes, very much so. you see — i see so much on the news, and hearing and talking to people, and on facebook. it has changed in a scary way. i am also hopeful, because i'm very optimistic, i am hopeful that it's going to bring about some change. because a lot of other things have happened as well as covid, coronavirus, and i'm optimistic

that there is going to be suddenly a different kind of world. our prime minister talks about how we need to be kind to each other, and i am hopeful that we mightjust have a rare bit of softening, in terms of how we support each other — and yes, just being kinder. krista, what does that mean to you? i love what christine said about supporting each otherand being kind, and i think that music and all the creative arts therapies is a wonderful way that we can believe again to start supporting each other again in a safe way. i do think that we all are vulnerable, right now, no matter what labels we are carrying and i think that all the arts allow a tool, to be used as a tool, for a way to reach out to each other

and start supporting each other. krista samborsky in canada and christine sullivan in new zealand, on the power of music for them during lockdown. next we're going to look at those for whom making music is a livelihood. if you are a musician, if you're playing in small venues, on festival stages, or in grand concert halls, well, that source of income pretty much dried up with the global lockdown, and it is a world that's not going to be easy to bring back. so next we are looking at an exceptional ensemble of black and minority ethnic players. the chineke!orchestra. here is a glimpse of their last live concert before lockdown... music playing.

professional double bassist chi—chi nwanoku created the chineke!foundation and orchestra in 2015 to champion diversity and change in classical music. and the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown has meant real personal pain. it made a real difference to her and her musicians. chi—chi, i would like to start by asking you about that, the impact of the lockdown. gosh, it had devastating impact, to be honest, and at a variety of levels. depending on how established you are and how much you depend on living from one day to the next on your livelihood or whether you are still a full—time student, for example. it has been fairly devastating, and notjust devastating inasmuch as how it hits the pocket butjust the sheer nature of our work

and what it is that drives us to want to be involved in the classical music industry is the whole aspect of what we do and that is performing to an audience. here i am in my music room and i can play for hours in here and, of course, it is nice to a certain degree, but i need to have my colleagues around me and just hearing that little clip of the last concert that we played at the end of the february, it sort of brought a lump to my throat, actually, because it is that interaction, that communing with each other as colleagues, and then with the live audience out there. it's...it‘s, um, yeah, we miss everyone. we miss each other. you are a musical leader, you're also a mentor. presumably you're talking day by day to people who would love to be together as an orchestra. are they feeling not

only the musical loss but the economic fallout? i think most musicians are freelance and most have been able to take advantage of the government 80% scheme. i'm one of those ones, unfortunately, that fall into the cracks so zero for me. no concert equals zero income but luckily there is going to be some recompense for those who qualify. it's. . . it's funny because, i always say, quite often when people say to me, because i've come from a working—class background and the sort of background i came from, the things that you know when you grow up and become an adult and go into an industry, go to the music college, go to university, whatever, you start to learn these things, that apparently i grew up poor but i never felt as though i was poor and i know

that was largely to do with the incredible family support i had, we all had amongst us, but also because i had music and i always felt rich because i had music. and so people suffer or experience that sort of fallout in a number of different ways and i think i am particularly resilient. some of our orchestra have had to move house, they have been thrown out by their live—in landlords and landladies, because they do not want somebody coming in and out of the house in case they're bringing back coronavirus. and so we have had all sorts of fallouts, which have been incredibly testing and trying. the way i immediately responded, myself personally, i am one of these people that, when i am given a challenge or told

i cannot do something, and i think, but why? there must be a way that we can do something, that we can play music together and i have created three partnerships — one with the sphinx orchestra, coming out of america, detroit, is the home base of sphinx, and then two collaborations for ourjunior orchestra — one with marin alsop‘s orchkids, which is in baltimore, and then gustavo dudamel‘s youth orchestra, that's based in los angeles, the yola. and so ourjuniors are all in conversation with each other and giving each other support, talking about their experiences, and thejuniors are planning on playing something together which is going to be fantastic. and this professional orchestra, we have already done — we have called it music across the ocean — we have done an incredible performance of the very piece that you played at the top of the show, well, we have done it with half of sphinx orchestra and half of the chineke! just finding ways — thank goodness we have got digital because we can put things together and do things as a community,

as a musical community. and that serves our audiences and i insisted that everybody got paid for recording their own parts at home. so we're finding ways to create projects to pay people. because, just the chineke!orchestra itself, between the shutdown, lockdown and october, the chineke! orchestra has lost something in the region of £350,000 worth of payment. chi—chi, i hear you talk about community, and i want to raise another kind of community, because we are also in another kind of crisis around police brutality and racial injustice, that is going to affect everyone in the orchestra and the foundation? completely and utterly. i think we were speaking before that, philippa, but the intensity has doubled, tripled, quadrupled.

the sheer amount of stories, more stories that are coming out because we have had zoom meetings, we have a chineke!orchestra zoom meeting tomorrow, and we had a zoom meeting last week with our audience, and it is extraordinary hearing the pain and the experiences of some of my colleagues, that we don't even talk about these things amongst ourselves normally because we come together to make music but, all of the micro aggressions and micro racist experiences that every single one of us have and have to navigate 365 days of the year, it is something that i realised we are such a strong people because we have had to manage all of this since the day we were born and yet we go forward with such generosity and such an urge to want to communicate

with everybody, notjust our black and minority ethnic audiences, and one of the things that i hope is going to really come across now is the fact that... ..it is not necessarily ourjob to fix this. we...we have, for example, with creating the chineke! foundation, we are putting, it is a spotlight, it is a showcase to demonstrate the immense talent, and ability that we have amongst our art community which i was led to believe that we did not exist, that i was the only one, or there was just one or two people, which is completely not true. and i had a meeting with someone at the carnegie hall, actually, a year or so ago, who was saying it's incredible the work you are doing, chi—chi,

because it really is showing what all the possibilities are, broadening the dimensions of our industry, but you should not be having to do this work, we, white people, are the ones who should do this work. you did not create this division, this situation, and one of the things that i will repeat is, this whole thing about racism, racism is not a black issue, racism is a white issue that has an adverse effect on black people, so we need to know that our white brothers and sisters are really awake to this now and we are waiting with open arms to embrace the things that we've always wanted to be part of. we have been left out of things, or had to continually prove more than most people that we...

why we deserve to have a seat at the table. i have had friends contacting me saying, chi—chi, i'm absolutely devastated because we have been friends all our lives, haven't we, and you know i am not a racist but i am horrified at understanding how my whiteness has benefited me in my life as opposed to all those hoops you had to jump through, chi—chi. chi—chi nwanoku ending this edition on live music in pandemic times. i'm philippa thomas. thank you forjoining me for this week's edition of coronavirus: your stories. hello there. it's been a humid week dominated by sharp, thundery downpours, hasn't it? but the weekend has started off quite promising with this little ridge of high pressure quieting things down. there's a weak weather front into the south just enhancing some showers and more rain to come overnight. but for most of us, it's a relatively quiet saturday.

any showers drifting through the south—west and south wales may well push up into the midlands, but they will be fairly isolated in comparison to late, and we might keep a little bit of low cloud, mist and fog lingering across the northern isles. but for most, it's a case of dry with lighter winds and sunny spells, and top temperatures peaking at 22 degrees. through this evening and overnight, there is some rain arriving from a weather front pushing in from the atlantic. the winds will strengthen. the rain will move its way across northern ireland into western scotland and across england and wales. around about an inch of rain in one or two places. widely we will see those temperatures holding up with the cloud and the rain around, double digits first thing on sunday morning. but early birds will see a spell of wet weather moving its way through scotland and eastern england, but it will clear quite quickly through the morning. around about coffee time we should see that rain easing away, drying up across england and wales despite a brisk south—westerly wind just a few isolated showers.

but more widespread showers likely across northern ireland and western scotland in particular. with gusts of wind in excess of 30 mph, so noticeable wind around on sunday, top temperatures still, though, around 21 or 22 degrees, perhaps not quite as warm in scotland. now, we keep this north/south divide into monday, with still a weather front enhancing some rain through northern ireland, through scotland and may be north—west england for a time. there will be a little more cloud as well generally through wales and south—west england, the best of any sunshine further east. top temperatures of 23 degrees. now, the trend is for conditions to warm up. in fact, some will see some hot weather as high pressure builds from the near continent, keeping that weather front up into the far north—west, but it is also going to drag with it some warmth as well, so we see the darker russet tones stretching right across the country. which means we are going to see some rain starting off across the far north and west monday into tuesday, but temperatures are likely to peak into the low 30s. that'll be the hottest weather we've got so far this year.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. uk ministers promise a review of the 2 metre social distancing rule will ‘conclude within days', which could make it easier for pubs and restaurants to open next month. passengers arriving at uk airports may soon be able to pay for a coronavirus test and avoid fourteen days in quarantine. the white house tries to fire the prosecutor investigating donald trump's associates — but he's refusing to step down. brazil becomes only the second country in the world to report more than a million cases of coronavirus. hope in the time of corona — climate campaigner greta thunberg tells us the crisis proves governments can take dramatic action.