“Early Ears”: Exploring practice and impact of Music Technology with Early Years Children in challenging circumstances.
“Early Ears” was a National Foundation for Youth Music funded project delivered by Future Projects in Norwich, in partnership with University Campus Suffolk, Laboratory Media Education, and Music Therapist Ingrid Roberts. The project sought to improve the musical and wider development of children under five in challenging circumstances. Two parallel music programmes were delivered on a weekly basis over two years within early years settings in deprived communities of Norfolk. The first delivered Music Tech sessions using modern devices, apps and software within a free-flow environment. The second consisted of a free-flow community music approach informed by music therapy techniques using acoustic, non-tech instruments.
Innovating and testing new ideas
As CEO of a charity which provides a very broad range of services (Community Radio Station, Independent Special School, Community Support Programmes, Reducing Re-Offending Projects, Employment Support Programmes, Media and Music Studios – the list goes on!), this particular project interested me greatly. Often, technology is seen as a negative influence on young people; watching TV, using smartphones etc. instead of studying, reading or talking with peers. And these days, technology is everywhere; in our parental questionnaires (sample of 112) we found that 96.4% of children had access to Digital Devices at home, but only 77.7% had access to musical instruments (real or toy). What if we could turn those Digital Devices into musical instruments? And what if we could prove that using Digital Devices for music had a beneficial impact on young children’s learning, relationships and confidence? Testing this is what really interested me in the first place.
Colleagues will post blogs here later about the ins-and-outs of what we delivered and you can download and read the Impact Report created by University Campus Suffolk (attached to this post) for more detail. However, I want to briefly explain some of things that, from my perspective, made our project work:
The Project Team
Our project team included Music Tech Leaders, Music Therapist, Funding Officer, myself and our Research team from UCS. The diversity and natural relationships formed within the team served to enhance our project as we learned from each other and adapted our ways of working. Of particular value was the embedded researchers who applied an evaluative eye to the work and provided real time feedback to allow us to change our delivery to learn more and respond to specific questions which arose. We could test ideas and theories through delivery and this allowed us to achieve important learning such as; how to engage shy children, or whether boys engaged better with Tech than girls.
Monitoring
Monitoring is often seen as a means to an end; a way of collecting evidence or data to prove to the funder that the project has had the desired effect. However, in our project the monitoring was so much more. We refined an existing Music Therapy Monitoring Tool (IMTAP) to suit our needs, and our Music Leaders were able to reflect on their data, along with their written observations to develop a greater understanding of how children were engaging with music, their peers, adults and the wider world. In addition, by working closely with Early Years Practitioners in each setting we were able to link our monitoring to the Early Years Foundation Stage Profiles, thus providing staff with new means of monitoring and understanding the progress of children in the context of their own work.
Sharing and Promotion
The National Foundation for Youth Music are keen on partners sharing and learning from each other. We did this by attending conferences such as MERYC and NYMAZ, and these were very helpful in making new connections and showcasing our work. However, by providing training to local Early Years settings and at University Campus Suffolk we were able to generate a real buzz about the work we did. Moreover, we were fortunate to link with like-minded organisations such as Great Yarmouth Community Trust where knowledgeable and driven leaders such as Charlotte Arculus could work closely with our own leaders such as Paul Weston and Ingrid Roberts to explore ways of working together. This made it clear how one or two driven individuals can make or break a project such as this.
We also created a set of guidance notes for Early Years practitioners of any kind that wish to use Music Technology in their setting. These are also attached to this post and may be circulated freely.
Daniel Childerhouse
Chief Executive Officer
Future Projects
(Norwich)