Early Years Music

Project Name
Early Years Music Workshop

School/ Organisation
Hindpool Nursery School, Barrow in Furness

Year group/Age of participants
3 & 4 year olds and parents

Date
17th July 2007

Name of Artist(s) involved
Mike Willoughby and Lawrence Woof

What were the aims of your project?
-To lead music workshops with three groups of children; beginning with warm-ups, singing and action songs, playing instruments and moving into a free-form narrative musical environment in which the children generated their own material, around the theme of a treasure hunt. We then wanted to use this material at the end of the day during the end-of-term family treasure-hunt that the nursery had planned and to try and get everyone making music together.

A further element of the project was to bring Lawrence gradually into a workshop-leading role as part of the artist mentoring programme run by Cumbria Arts in Education.

What did you do?
We carried out the above plan, with a sustained narrative supplied by the children involving an underwater voyage. Children played drums, squeezeboxes and guitars and sang. Lawrence led large groups as well as teaching smaller groups and some one-to-one musical teaching. We played to the parents and children and got everyone singing and clapping and dancing.

What were the successes of the project?
The interest that the children took in music-making and the creative process. The way that both parents and children recognised the symbolic role of music in the end-of-year celebrations. The opportunity for Lawrence to lead workshops in a supportive environment.

What were the challenges?
The challenge with a large group is inclusivity. As the day progressed it got easier to let children come and go from the music room as the inclination took them without this being particularly unsettling to the group as a whole. This was quite different from the primary-school work that Mike and I had done previously, and something I wish I had understood earlier.