MAKE SOME NOISE

Make Some Noise is centred around early years music-making, giving families at participating children’s centres access to bespoke programmes devised by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Education team, together with staff from the children’s centres. Regular sessions take place over a five-week period, led by a small team including RPO education workshop leader, Sigrun Sævarsdóttir-Griffiths, three musicians from the RPO and one EMS tutor. Sessions are shaped to be highly interactive, using creative improvisation to animate the stories and themes of the sessions through playful and creative approaches.

Desired outcomes from the project include increased confidence and participation skills amongst the young children, and the centres have identified key needs within their centres that they would like to address through the project. As a result, the programmes at each children’s centre have been shaped around one of the two key strands:

Lockdown Babies – This strand aims to support babies that have been born during lockdown, and new parents who have experienced increased difficulties during this time with limited access to support and social interactions.

SEN Music Provision – Children with Special Educational Needs tend to respond particularly strongly to musical interaction. This strand aims to support staff at the children’s centres to build their confidence and skills in delivering in class music sessions with these children.

The five children’s centres involved in the project this term include Grove House Nursery & Children’s Centre, Windmill

Children’s Centre, South Acton Children’s Centre and Greenfields Children’s Centre, with Hanwell Children’s Centre scheduled for August. The project will continue in two further children’s centres in the Autumn term.

Our team of EMS tutors working on the project during the Summer term include Christian Sutherland, Guitar; Lynn Henderson, French horn; Vincent Raven, Violin; Tamaki Sugimoto, Cello; Nicola Tagoe, Flute; and Souleymane Compo, Drums. Lynn Henderson has also worked with the RPO Education team to devise resources to support children’s centre staff during the initial stages of the project, with additional post-project resources being created to summarise musical techniques, games and exercises used during the project and capture any music created during sessions.

A robust and creative evaluation process has been embedded throughout the project to review the impact and benefit for families, staff and musicians within each of the children’s centres, and to inform our continued work in the field of early years music-making. Follow us on social media to keep up to date with the progress of the Make Some Noise project!