Youth Music - BongoClub.org.uk

Sarah Carling

Having set her heart on teaching, it was only a matter of time before Sarah Carling's aspirations became a reality. Running voluntary music groups, teaching in formal education and getting to grips with life as a freelancer all stood Sarah in good stead when she decided to set up her own mail order company specialising in resources for music education.

"I always knew I wanted to become a teacher - that was right in the forefront of my mind. I did a music degree at City University with quite a big focus on music education as a part of it. I was going to do my teacher training (it was always on the agenda), but I ended up working for a voluntary church music project in Camberwell called the Camberwell Choir School. I was working there as an assistant in my third year at university. As I finished university and graduated, the director of the project left her position, so I applied for the job and got it. I spent the next five years running a voluntary community music project. So I didn't do my teacher training - I ran the project and did some freelancing here there and everywhere and got really involved in singing. When I took over at Camberwell Choir School, it was an 8 - 13 year olds project. I immediately set up a 5 - 8 year olds project and the next thing was under 5's. So we started a project called Mini Music there, which worked really well and was very popular.

Then there came a time when I felt I really needed to do my teacher training. So I took a deep breath and resigned from Camberwell Choir School. I applied to the Open University (OU) because I'd been doing a lot of freelance work and didn't want to give up everything. Although I applied to do primary music with the OU, they didn't have any spaces left, so I did secondary music with them instead as I had resigned from my job by then! The course ran for 18 months and I quickly realised that I didn't want to teach children that were older. I found that I was coming in to teach 11 and 12 year olds who didn't have the basic music skills. That worried me quite a lot that children of that age didn't know what a steady beat was and couldn't recognise pitch differences. I felt that somewhere, something was missing lower down [in their education].

I'd already done some work in primary schools as an unqualified teacher, and I went back to that and stayed there as a peripatetic music teacher. I was teaching in three different schools and covering the music curriculum as a specialist. Then a position came up in the early years department in one of the schools for a job share for two days a week as a general classroom teacher. I took it and learnt a bit about working in early years and foundation stage. I'd found my niche - I love working with older children and would never want to be pigeon holed, but I like working with children that want to do it. With secondary school teaching, the reality is that they don't necessarily want to do it. When you're working with foundation stage, there's a lot of enthusiasm from the children and it's very exciting. I feel as though I'm making a difference working with an early years age range, and that matters to me. One quote that really stuck in my mind from my PGCE training was "what children do with you today, they can for themselves tomorrow".

Since my PGCE I have embarked on some early childhood music training. I've done quite a lot on child development on the job, but I've also been on as many courses as I possibly can. It's something I'm totally fascinated by. When I ran Mini Music at Camberwell Choir School, I also taught piano lessons and ran some music groups from home. I found that the resources that I wanted to use in my own music sessions were not available. So I was taking a lot of time to source good toys and instruments that I could use in my practice and soon parents started to ask where they could get hold of similar resources. I was passing on instruments to parents through my suppliers and suddenly thought that I could bring the music sessions and the resources I was sourcing, together a bit more.

With a small amount of funding, I got going and set up my own company: Music for Starters. I source toys and musical instruments from suppliers, who sell them wholesale to public companies and toy manufacturers. I've got a great range of music-based resources now and a small range of products are made to order. Music for Starters is very small when you compare us with the big boys, and we're in a difficult position because we don't stock all of the huge tuned percussion instruments. Sometimes we end making a very small mark up just to be competitive, but we have the knowledge. I know what I'm talking about! There are three of us that work here that have good, solid knowledge of how to apply what we're doing. We also have a newsletter that goes out every month packed with information, which is really useful."

Music for Starters is a mail order company specialising in early childhood music education. The company has a comprehensive catalogue of puppets, percussion instruments, scarves, books, CDs and other resources available to purchase.

For more information, or to sign up to the Music for Starters newsletter, visit:
http://www.musicforstarters.com/

Funding for music activities

If you're a practitioner looking for funding for music activities, your project could be eligible for funding from Youth Music's First Steps programme.

MusicLeader