Singer-songwriter Marsha Swanson has launched TroubleChutes, a music-led project that brings together 15 professionally recorded original songs, illustration and guided discussion. It helps primary-school children explore feelings and experiences they may struggle to put into words, covering subjects from jealousy and bullying to divorce and grief.
Unlike many educational music resources, TroubleChutes is written and recorded by working musicians. Its contemporary sound is intended to stand as music in its own right and to sit closer to the music children hear outside the classroom. The recordings feature drummer Martyn Barker, pianist Clifford Slapper, guitarist Tony Qunta and producer and bassist Henry Thomas, known for BBC Rockschool.
The first standalone single from the project, Something Real, was released in July and drew praise from music publications internationally, including EARMILK, Atwood Magazine, France’s Indie Chronique, Australia’s TAGG and Milwaukee-based Breaking & Entering. Atwood Magazine praised Swanson’s “thoughtful songwriting” and described the track as transforming a profound idea into something “warm and accessible”. Producer Stuart Epps, whose credits include Elton John and Led Zeppelin, contributed additional production and mastering to the single.
The project’s visual world is being developed with award-winning Iranian filmmaker and animator Sam Chegini. He created the Something Real video, released in August, which blends live footage with watercolour textures and dreamlike visual effects. Chegini was recently the subject of a BBC Persian documentary about his work as a music video director, including collaborations with Chris de Burgh, Lenny Henry, Jakko Jakszyk and Ian Anderson, as well as three of his projects with Swanson. The pair also made the claymation film Generational Transmission, which won Best Experimental Animation at the 2026 New York Film Screening Festival and is due to screen in New York in December.
Alongside her career as a recording artist, Swanson has spent more than two decades using music in her work with children. Her early work at Kids Company included lyric workshops alongside music, recording, movement and performance. She was later credited for “lyrical consultations” on Martina Topley-Bird’s Mercury Prize-nominated album Quixotic. She holds a First-Class Honours degree in Psychology and has worked across educational, charitable and specialist therapeutic settings, including with children unable to access mainstream education, supported by five years of weekly supervision from child psychotherapist Dr Anne Alvarez of the Tavistock Clinic. Psychotherapist and author Susie Orbach has described Swanson as someone who “brings emotional literacy to songs while warming our hearts”.
TroubleChutes grew out of that work. Each song follows a character through an experience such as jealousy, grief, divorce, bullying, exclusion or anxiety. Children discuss what the character might be feeling first, then consider whether or how it connects to their own lives, with no expectation to share anything personal. Listening, drawing, movement and performance give them different ways to take part.
Swanson said: “Children don’t always have the language to explain what is happening for them emotionally, but they can often recognise something in a song first. That little bit of distance can make difficult subjects easier to think about and talk about. Rather than telling them what they should feel, TroubleChutes aims to give children the space to understand what they feel and to hear how others in their peer group may experience the same situation completely differently.”
The project arrives as England’s revised health education guidance puts renewed focus on helping primary pupils recognise and talk about their feelings. 2025 research from the National Literacy Trust found that 81.4% of the 8 to 18-year-olds surveyed believed they were good at listening to others and understanding their point of view, while fewer than half (44.8%) felt they were good at expressing their own feelings.
The approach has developed through Swanson’s work with children across contrasting school settings. Most recently, St Mary’s Hampton CE Primary School became a TroubleChutes Ambassador School, helping to refine the final stages of the resource and collaborating on a filmed pilot with its pupils. Swanson also provided staff training, and the school said it was “incredibly excited to be one of the first schools to access and use this innovative resource”. The filmed pilot is now being presented to broadcasters.
TroubleChutes was developed and published in partnership with specialist mental-health publisher Karnac Books. It is designed for flexible use across whole-class, small-group and one-to-one settings, as well as assemblies and alongside PSHE, music and literacy.
More information, including the Something Real video, is available at troublechutes.co.uk and marshaswanson.com.