Wild Sounds: Music Making at Forest School
A Youth Music funded program delivered by Wildthings Ecological Education Collective with support from Community Recording Studio Nottingham (CRS) and local Nottingham based artists and musicians.
During the past year over 50 children and young people from inner city Nottingham have engaged in a creative program of nature based music making and creative discovery in the outdoors; Wild Sounds.
They have been involved in a regular project of activities and learner centred workshops, which have allowed them to explore the woodland and natural environment along with the risks and challenges it brings to build confidence and self esteem and to develop positive relationships with themselves, each other and the natural world.
Activities have included den making, fire lighting and cooking, foraging, mini beast hunting, green wood working and crafts, woodland walking and exploring to name a few. Local musicians and artists have delivered more specialised workshops in lyric writing and developing beats and rhythms using instruments and scavenged natural materials from their surroundings. Children and young people were encouraged and supported to use various sound recording equipment and software to record and develop their sounds, this has culminated in each group composing their own pieces of music and video and sound scapes to document their experience. One of the highlights of the project for many children was visiting the Community Recording Studio to use professional equipment to piece it all together.
The majority of children and young people that we work with live in areas of Nottingham City that are effected by multiple deprivation and that are heavily urbanised areas of social and economic deprivation. For the majority of children involved the project was an entirely new experience and they had never been to the woods in this country. Children from a range of backgrounds shared their own experiences of music including a varied mix of traditional and folk songs alongside current pop references. For some of the children from migrant communities these themes bought up stories of home and reminded them of times in their life, which they talked about with their peers.
Feedback from schools and partners has been positive. Teachers and learning support workers have commented on their enjoyment at seeing children who don't make a sound in the classroom singing, rapping and performing to music and sounds they've created. Children who struggle to engage academically have thrived in this environment and have enjoyed feeding back to class mates, teachers and schools, who have incorporated the experiences and learning into assemblies and in their literacy work.
Wildthings would be excited to hear from other outdoor education providers who also incorporate music into their delivery of environmental education or forest schools.
