Nia Davies Williams

Originally from the Llŷn Peninsula, North Wales, Nia Davies Williams graduated in Music at Bangor University. She followed this with a masters’ degree that focused on the relationship between music and dementia.

For three years, she coordinated ‘Singing for the Brain’ groups organised by the Alzheimer’s Society in North Wales. Since then, she has delivered a pilot project using the arts to tackle loneliness among older people in rural areas throughout Gwynedd through a locally-based music centre funded by the local council’s community arts unit. Due to the initial success of the project, further sessions 
were funded and other areas of loneliness targeted in this region of Wales.

In addition to numerous freelance work in care homes around north and west Wales, working mainly with people who have dementia, Nia was made Resident Musician at Bryn Seiont Newydd Dementia Care Centre in 2015, which is part of the Pendine Park Care organisation in Wrexham, North Wales. 

She has given presentations on music and dementia in several conferences in the UK and in the USA, publishing two articles in the multi-disciplinary Welsh-language online journal Gwerddon, both of which assess the effects of music on people who have dementia. She has also written articles on her work for The Journal of Dementia Care. In 2017 she was awarded the prestigious Sir Bryn Terfel Foundation Wales Care Award for Promoting the Arts in Social Care.