Ciara was 14 when Jack started working with her and she was not able to attend school because of her mental health issues. Ciara came to sessions with lyrics she'd written independently and rough ideas for melodies.
Jack worked to help her structure her lyrics, refine melodies, decided on chords and work with the other young people at Chalkhill Mental Health Centre to play the instruments and record backing tracks for her to sing to.
For Ciara, recording the songs and hearing them back and liking how they sounded was the most important thing. Ciara ended up developing a jazzy style of singing that Jack worked to respond to with the backing music that others in the group made for her. The other young people were really supportive of her and enjoyed working on the music for her to sing to. Ciara she wrote mostly about themes of mental health, death, drugs drinking, using very mature imagery to evoke quite dark emotions, but was also quite tongue in cheek about some of it, using humour alongside very dark imagery
Ciara's Lyrics - Down in the Forest
“My back is wet, there’s mud on my clothes
Down in the forest where nobody goes
Surrounded by silence, surrounded by lies
Hiding away from prying eyes
And I’ve got a question to ask you
Yes I’ve got a question to ask
What would it be like to be real people
Who are we under our masks
Powers an illusion, we’re not in control
Who can save our dirty souls
Shying away from the rest of humanity
I’m the epitome of insanity
And I’ve got a question…….”