Drum United: Pass it On - Early Years
We have just completed a series of projects including working with Early Years. Me and the Drum United team can see the amazing benefits that music making and in particular drumming and percussion can have for the Early Years, but also as an inclusive activity that helps to unite and strengthen the bond between child and parent / carer, and the bond within their social circle / community.
Drum United has just completed its first project funded by Youth Music. Our project is titled “Pass it On” taken from the musical game of passing a beat around the circle. But more than this, the title reflects our outlook and vision – to pass on to young people musical skills, transferable skills and a positive mind-set.
In this project, we worked with three main groups of young musicians: Early Years (under 5’s) and their parent / carer, young musicians with special educational / additional / behavioural needs and young musicians at after school activities in deprived areas.
In this post I’d like to focus on the weekly Early Years sessions that took place in Brighton and Hove, in East Sussex and in West Sussex.
Our Early Years sessions took place in children’s centres and libraries – yes, libraries! We were very warmly received in these places and we are grateful to these services who realise the growing demand to provide more community based activities. Having arranged these sessions taken place in libraries, I can recommend organisations partner with their local authority libraries services and provide music activities in these settings.
In our Early Years and Special Educational Needs sessions we used a mixture of un-tuned and tuned percussion, mainly xylophones and sonor boxes in a pentatonic scale (C, D, F, G, A). These pitched instruments gave a warm accompaniment to the hand drums also used in the sessions. In turn, this proved to be very calming and therapeutic for attending YM’s. An example of this would be the very young participants (aged 1 - 3) who would show signs before the session of restlessness and low levels of concentration, but when our facilitators began the sessions by playing a hand drum and tuned percussion the participants would all very quickly settle into our circle and stay focused for 20 – 25 minutes. We were often given feedback from staff, parents and carers that they had never experienced their YM’s to concentrate and be engaged in an activity for such a long time, for so many weeks.
Over all, myself and the team at Drum United can see the amazing benefits that music making and in particular drumming and percussion can have for the Early Years, but also as an inclusive activity that helps to unite and strengthen the bond between child and parent / carer, and the bond within their social circle / community. If you and your organisation already works with the Early Years or is considering to do so it would be great to hear from you and help Youth Music to build on the great work it does for this group.