Take Art is working in partnership with Octagon Music Hub to support early years music and creative practice across Somerset and Dorset. We do this through providing bespoke training for staff, leading on creative projects within early years settings and creating connections via networks.
Through our projects and training packages we build the skills and confidence of education staff and music/creative practitioners who work directly with young children, empowering them to incorporate thoughtful, appropriate, easy to access activities within provision which, in turn, support wellbeing, learning and development.
Our training is delivered by knowledgeable and experienced facilitators who understand potential challenges faced by participants. Sessions are carefully planned to be accessible to everyone, whether or not they consider themselves to be ‘musical’ or ‘creative’ and to support learning progression. They are evidence based, full of practical ideas and under-pinned by frameworks and theories.
We also offer course fee bursaries to study the Level 4 Certificate for Music Educators: EarlyChildhood, accredited by Trinity College London, and delivered by the Centre for Research in Early Childhood (CREC) based in Birmingham.
“It’s filled me with so much more confidence within using music in my practice. Before the course I felt nervous whenever I read ‘music’ on my school planning. Now I’ve learned that music exploration for children is all around and there’s lots of creativity just observing children and offering a wide range of objects for musical exploration (not just traditional musical instruments). I’ve learned lots of new songs to sing and also that I need to shake my recorded music repertoire up - children need lots more variety and genres played.” - Feedback from student, Building Confidence using Music in Early Years Provision course, Spring 2026.
Octagon Music Hub is one of our partners in Little People Big Ideas – a national cross-artform research project funded by Youth Music. OctagonMusic Hub’s support helps Take Art to gain investment for music and creative programmes that not only benefit local children, families and education staff but also have national reach.
"This project places practitioners in a highly privileged position – being able to stop, watch and actively listen to what is happening in settings. Deep dive[s] into children’s creativity inspires us and helps us to understand each individual child’s identity’".- Reflections by trainee creative practitioner, Little People Big Ideas 2026
Through engaging with children and their families we aim to share ideas and strengthen bonds.
"I just wanted to share how great take art were today. It was lovely to see everyone being so creative with such simple things. Parents/carers and all the children were engaged and there were lots of ideas to take away, do at home for little or no cost. Take Art had a great way in promoting play, imagination and creativity without saying a word! "- Feedback from parent following Little People Big Ideas family session, October 2025
