Eliza Wylie and Amy Hardwick (Take Art EYs music practitioners / CME:EC students), Ursula Crickmay (PhD University of Exeter research student) Rachel Parish (Manager of The Willow Set Preschool in rural Somerset and Nursery World Award Winner for ‘Outstanding Individual Contribution’), her staff and Jane Parker (Early Years Music Lead Take Art) will share their reflections of continuing a collaborative Early Years Music programme during a time of great restrictions.

The Zoom event will share how the Youth Music funded programme brought together artists, a researcher and the Early Years workforce to continue to exchange ideas, skills and forge connections during a pandemic. Come and meet all involved in the shared learning programme and learn how - as the participatory practice was forced to move online - approaches both with very young children and adults needed to adapt.
This Zoom will be a mixture of listening to a short presentation sharing the approach of the project (to tune into very young children’s spontaneous musical behaviours and reflect on the most appropriate short songs and rhymes to sing with very young children), breakout room discussions facilitated by project members, and time to learn some simple music activities that proved the most effective.

With thanks to MERYC-England who support proposals from organisations or small groups of individual practitioners for small-scale initiatives that will aim to foster better practice in early childhood music through research and reflection.