Music Is Medicine
A Leeds recovery project that was calling itself therapy. Now it says what it is: ten weeks on the decks.
- Services
- Content, Strategy, UX/UI Design, Website, WordPress Development
- Client
- Music Is Medicine (Zoie Murch)
- Year
- 2026 - Ongoing
Before
After
Challenge
A project doing real good in Leeds, with a website that made it sound like a clinic.
Zoie owned a set of decks for ten years without learning to use them. On her fortieth birthday she decided she was going to, and a couple of months of Tuesday lessons later she was mixing. She's in recovery herself, and she knew what that feeling was worth to someone whose evenings used to be filled by drink or drugs. So she started Music Is Medicine: free DJ sessions at Pirate Studios in Kirkstall, taught by working Leeds DJs who give their time, for adults in recovery.
The first website was a template. It opened with "Music is Therapy" and talked about a "music therapy programme", which is a regulated thing Music Is Medicine isn't and never claimed to be in person. The DJ course was buried under a cookie banner, there were no numbers anywhere, and a referral worker landing on it couldn't tell what happened in a session, who ran it, or how to put someone forward.
Behind the site, the bigger job was waiting. Zoie wanted Music Is Medicine to become a proper charity, with trustees, funders and a paid role so it didn't depend on her goodwill forever. None of that was going to happen off a page that called itself therapy.
Before and after, on a phone
Goal
Say what actually happens, prove it with the real numbers, and give three different people a way in.
Three people land on this site: someone in recovery who's curious, a worker at a service like Forward Leeds who wants to refer them, and someone with money or kit or a spare evening who might help. The old site spoke to none of them. The new one had to speak to all three without turning into a brochure.
The rules we set with Zoie first: people in recovery come first, no clinical claims, no invented quotes, no invented numbers. Then:
The programme, written like a programme.
Ten weeks. Two hours a week. Pirate Studios, Kirkstall, six till eight. Weeks one and two you get comfortable, by week ten you're holding a mix. Free, no experience needed. That's the page, and that's the pitch.
The real numbers, up front.
January to August 2026: twenty-six Leeds DJs gave their time, ten people in recovery got on the decks, three programmes ran back to back. Those are Zoie's figures, not ours, and they sit above the fold.
A record, not a website.
Side A is the programme. Side B is why it exists, in Zoie's own words: "It's alright stopping drinking and drugs. That's the easy part. It's what do you do with that time?" The skills run across the page like a track listing, and the last one is the point: something to look forward to.
The DJs, named.
Twenty-six working DJs taught for nothing. They're on the homepage by name, and the Our People page is growing a Meet the Crew section as each one sends a few lines and a photo.
Five ways to help, one form.
Refer someone. Fund or sponsor. Teach a session. Lend a studio or some kit. Partner with us. Each one gets its own card and the same short form, so the person with a spare Tuesday and the person with a budget both know where to go.
Dark, pink and loud, on purpose.
Neue Haas Grotesk headlines, Instrument Sans body, Space Mono labels, hot pink with lilac and teal on black. It looks like a night out, because that's the world these people are being invited back into.
The quiet bits.
Samaritans, FRANK and NHS numbers in every footer, because some of the people reading this need them tonight. A line on the referral form asking people not to share anything personal. A privacy policy that's true. Nobody notices, which is the point.
Result
A site that tells the truth about Music Is Medicine, and the groundwork to turn it into a charity.
The new site is live. A referral worker can read what happens in a session, who teaches it and where, and put someone forward with one short form. A funder can see what twenty-six DJs and three programmes add up to without asking. And someone in recovery who stumbles on it at midnight gets a photo of a mixer and a sentence that says no experience needed, rather than a word like therapy.
Alongside the site, we built Zoie a nine-page plan for what comes next: the legal structure, the evidence a funder will ask for, the partnerships, the board, the roadmap. It's the boring work that turns a good idea into something that outlasts the person who had it.
The DJ testimonials are coming in one at a time, the first sober open decks nights have happened, and the next programme has a page worth sending people to. Early days, and we'd rather say so than dress it up.
Five ways to help, one form
