Youth Music - BongoClub.org.uk

Nicola Burke began teaching music in 1998, incorporating instrumental teaching at a special needs school into her portfolio of work in 2001. As well as working with a pre-school music company, Nicola has written and delivered music making programmes and training courses for arts organisations, networks of the National Childminding Association (NCMA) and for early years services across the country. She has worked with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (training musicians to work with young children), and works for Youth Music's Action Zone: Music Fusion, on a freelance basis. She collaborated with Miranda Boakes-Clark and Elizabeth Scott Hall to produce The Guide to Music for 0-3 year olds. The guide is full of songs and ditties to sing with babies and toddlers and includes information on how to sing songs, run music sessions and incorporate toys, movement and play into the sessions you are taking.
Here she talks to Bongo Club about the challenges and rewards of putting this useful resource together.

What inspired 'The Guide to Music' in the first place?
The idea came around in 2004 - Miranda, Elizabeth and myself work for Music Fusion on a freelance basis. The Youth Music Action Zone covers Portsmouth, Havant, Fareham & Gosport and we'd been doing lots of work with parents and early years practitioners with pre-school age groups. From working with so many people across the zone, we realised that there was a real need for more musical activities for 0 - 3 year olds, and more training for the people working with them. We put together a training course, which is accredited through the Open College Network at level 2, and part of that training programme was to put together the resource: The Guide to Music. There seemed to be a real need in the area, for resources for the 0 - 3 year olds.

How did you share the workload between the three of you - did you all bring a different skill set to the project?
That was one of the hardest things actually - deciding how to divide things up! It was a very organic process and we decided to research individually to collect the kind of songs we used in our practice individually. Then we met on a weekly basis to thrash out what we wanted in the resource and how we would put it together. So essentially we all chose songs that we use ourselves and then thought about how you would use them with babies and the older children.

Some of the songs are traditional nursery rhymes - are some of the other songs your own compositions?
Yes, some of them are our own and some of them are taken from other books, which we had to get copyright permission for, in order to reproduce them in the guide. There's a real mixture!

What was the reaction to the book when it came out?
Very, very positive - we've recently had some feedback from people who work with children with speech and language difficulties. They're finding the resource very useful. What we tried to do with as many songs as we could, was to include the developmental aspects that the song would be supporting - and that could include mobile babies, non-mobile babies and children with language difficulties. We included comments on how a song could help with motor skills for instance, so that people got the idea that although singing and music is great and it's fun, it's also so useful and important in so many areas of child development. We really wanted to put that point across as well.

Is the book aimed at parents as well as practitioners?
Absolutely - people were finding out about the book via websites and by word of mouth, and lots of parents have been using it. We got really great, positive feedback from them as well. We tried to make the guide as user-friendly as possible. We tried to use the songs in as many ways as possible too, because there are so many things you can do with just one song.

What was the most enjoyable aspect of putting the book together?
I enjoyed all of it, but working with Elizabeth and Miranda on a weekly basis, and being able to discuss so many things on a deep level was great. We had so many discussions about why we do things and how they're useful. So, the most enjoyable part was spending time with two other professional people with such a wide range of experience in the field, and having that quality time to go through ideas. Seeing the book in its final state was really satisfying too!

What was challenging about putting the book together?
The biggest obstacle that we had to overcome was copyright permission. There were specific songs that we really wanted to use because they were favourites of our own. Just trying to source who originally wrote certain songs and where we could get copyright permission from, took far more time than we anticipated. If we did anything again, we'd have more of an idea of where to start with contacts and all those kinds of things. There are some songs that people perceive as traditional songs, that actually aren't traditional songs! 'Horsey, Horsey' wasn't in the public domain for instance - someone had written it and owned the copyright. It was really interesting actually and there were some songs that we couldn't use because we couldn't source the copyright permission. It was a huge learning curve - not just for the three of us, but for the whole Music Fusion team.    

To find out more about The Guide to Music, and how to purchase a copy, visit:
http://www.bongoclub.org.uk/practitioners/resources/the-guide-to-music-fusion.html