Camerata at the Just So Festival

It's a busy time for Manchester Camerata's Learning and Participation team with several exciting projects on the go this month.  Nick Ponsillo heads up the department and looks ahead to Camerata's involvement in the Just So Festival in Staffordshire.

"At Camerata we’re very excited to be involved in the Just So Festival, where we’ll be working with parents and their children in Dalcroze Eurythmics sessions - you can find our more about this fascinating technique in two videos we've just added to out Vodcast Page

Over the past two years we’ve developed this part of our learning programme, which can often be the first step on the road to being actively involved in music. During a recent presentation it surprised the group to discover that Camerata work with children as young as this and they were even more surprised to find out that we work with babies and pregnant mums too.

In fact, it sparked a small debate about at what age are children able to engage with music. Some members of the group suggested that at around 6 years old the children might be able to sit still, listen to the music and gain some understanding of what was being played to them.  But we feel that  for people of all ages to gain the most benefit from the arts they need to be actively involved in the creative proces

At the early years stage this can be achieved by engaging the children in creative play, with the ‘music’ element being gently woven into their everyday fun activities – for example, improvising a simple song as they play with a set of toys, engaging them in singing with you and asking for their input into what words to change to make it more relevant to the individual; placing simple percussion instruments around a play space and as the children encounter them and experiment with the soundworld engage them in an improvised ‘musical conversation’.

We took this approach during our recent project at a community centre in Chester. Check out the website to see the film and listen to the podcast.

We'd love to know what people think about these techniques, and their own experience of introducing music to children"

Nick Ponsillo
Head of Learning and Participation
nponsillo@manchestercamerata.com