Approaches to musicking with families

This is a free event and is selling out quickly. If you book a place and can no longer attend, it is important that you let Emily (emily@sound-connections.org.uk) know ASAP so that your place can be offered to someone else.

We’re really looking forward to welcoming you to this face-to-face event in collaboration with the Royal College of Music, bringing together RCM doctoral students and practitioners/practitioner-researchers who will be sharing emerging ideas from their work in progress and considering the musical lives of families with very young children at home and across education, care, health and culture settings.

There will be time for group discussion to explore issues raised by the speakers or share your own questions or reflections on your work in this area (or listen).

Songs for babies: melody as message and lyrics as lament - Debi Graham (Doctoral student – RCM)

Why are so many traditional songs for babies across time and cultures filled with sadness, regret, bribery, and even violence? We will have some fun looking at some songs and their lyrics from around the globe and asking ourselves, what (and who) are these lyrics for? Songs from Kenya, Japan, Italy, Spain, Honduras, Equador, Victorian England, Scotland, and ancient Babylonia will feature in our source material, variously described as cradle songs, lullabies, washing songs, and play songs. We will apply this exploration to ideas for our own practice with families with babies.

Music at Heart - Penny Osmond, Ayozie Pollendine

Music at Heart is a participatory singing and music-making programme for mothers experiencing perinatal mental illness, supported by Creative Futures and the Central and North West London NHS Perinatal team. We’ll be reflecting on our practice, sharing some of the things we’ve learnt as well as some of the challenges and some questions we’re continuing to explore.

“Cultural rights and practices” in the early childhood music educators and researchers conversation - María Magdalena Sánchez (Doctoral student - RCM/MERYC England/LAHP)

Under-fives -and critically, under fours and threes- and their families are massively underestimated as active audiences at arts and cultural institutions, seeing their right to art participation extensively challenged. I will review some central themes that have occupied the early childhood music community and some trends in the european conversation, with the perception that themes surrounding “cultural policy and practices” are being vaguely covered (cultural policies, cultural rights of access and participation, musical opportunities for early childhood at cultural institutions, and the diverse implications of early childhood as a cultural audience).

The Family Music Hub - Rosie Adediran, Kate Neilson and Nicola Burke

The Family Music Hub is a new initiative founded by Rosie Adediran, Kate Neilson and Nicola Burke. Its vision is to change and transform the landscape of music-making with families, through supporting, training and collaborating with the workforce, the majority of whom don't have a musical background or training. In this presentation we will share details and findings from our recent Youth Music funded action research project that took place in Birmingham involving family workers, and will share our vision and planned pathway for The Family Music Hub.

Idealized motherhood and musicking as a new mother - Vanessa Stansall (Doctoral student – RCM)

A central theme in feminist writing on motherhood in the last 30 years has been the concept of idealized motherhood. I will discuss some of the main theories in this area and how it might be relevant to our work with families with very young children. I will be asking - what do we actually know about mothers’ musical lives? What is ‘appropriate’ musicking with a baby (and what isn’t) – and who decides? Do mothers ever have negative experiences with music? How might mothers resist idealized motherhood? I hope together we can also begin to explore how we might make space for resistance and solidarity in our work with families.