St Helens Council - The Sound Factory

On obtaining a music grant of £5000 three early years practitioners, Joy Potter, Linda Knowles and Jenny Clark worked together on a plan to put the money to greatest effect for early years children and it was decided that influencing and enthusing practitioners would be the way forward.

At the commencement of the project children from the three practitioners' settings experimented with music making and musical instruments in an ad hoc way.

Following this the settings had the experience of working with three musicians, a contemporary drummer, a musician specialising in Asian music and an African drummer for a day each when carers were invited to join in. The three artists inspired children, practitioners and carers to take a serious interest in music so the scene was set for what the practitioners wished to do.

The practitioners wanted children to investigate as many ways as possible of making sounds and music and if possible to construct their own musical instruments. Carers were asked to join the project by assembling some kind of "chime bars" to be used in the outside environment.

Children after a lot of investigation, enquiry and experimentation came up with many ideas of how to make sounds and duly converted these to a range of musical instruments - shakers, beaters, scrapers, pluckers etc. Working at home with children carers produced a fantastic range of chiming instruments using a wide range of recycled materials.

The children used the instruments in organised music sessions eventually being introduced to "scores" and had continuous access to them within the environment but often gained most joy and use of them in the outdoor environment. There they could work in an uninhibited fashion and fully investigate sound, discovering velocity, rhythm, pattern, timbre etc. Instruments and chime bars were presented in new, exciting and creative ways by practitioners and children became fully engaged. Some children in the course of time came to use instruments in a very controlled and sophisticated way and were able to follow scores independently.

Practitioners, particularly Linda, who admitted to being terrified of the project as she was music illiterate, all agreed that the project had been very successful from the children's perspective as they had found it fun and had addressed all areas of the curriculum in their activities. Confidence, concentration and self-esteem had been boosted and children and carers alike had been empowered by their experiences.

At the end of the project settings held open days for carers and visitors and then practitioners went on to deliver a taster session of the project at an early years network meeting of over 60 people. There followed two half-day inset courses on the "Sound Factory" both of which were fully subscribed to and excellent practitioner evaluations ensued.

The project ultimately reached many practitioners and hopefully many children will benefit from its dissemination.