SEND Creative Music Making at Bolton Central Library

Note Weavers Directors Georgina and Sorrel have been delivering a series of music sessions, working on behalf of Bolton Libraries and Museums Service. The family sessions were for early years children, and children with special educational needs and disabilities and were located at Bolton Museum and Smithills Hall.

All the sessions had a multi-sensory focus and incorporated musical games and activities, as well as giant scrunchies, scarves, lycra and soft toys, sensory balls, stories and musical instruments.  Different rooms in the venues were used depending upon the needs of the children and their families.

Developing Developing resources with the BBC Philharmonic:

      The Gingerbread Man

Over the past few months we have greatly enjoyed working with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra’s Digital and Learning team to develop their Musical Story of the Gingerbread Man, a short film for children with a series of associated activities for early years and key stage 1 settings.

Supporting parent-infant mental health

Musical Connection is a joint project developed though partnership between Trafford, Salford and Wigan Home-Start and Note Weavers.

The Home-Start charity helps families with young children through challenging times, using a local community network of trained volunteers and expert support.

“Musical Connection” will offer support to parents during the critical first 1001 days of their children’s lives, ensuring that they are better equipped to meet their children’s mental, emotional and developmental needs and give them the best possible start.

Talking Regions 

Note Weavers CIC have been awarded £30,000 by Youth Music using public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England to support early years music education in the North West of England and beyond.

Our Community, Our Future 

Our Community, Our Future (OCOF) is the social integration programme for Blackburn with Darwen. This government funded, three year programme has been developed by Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council working with a wide range of local partners.

Note Weavers were successful in securing a grant from the Our Community Our Future (OCOF) fund to embed current successful delivery and extend our community networking.

The OCOF project has a specific focus across three areas:

• the connecting and signposting of pre-school children with SEND to the groups
• working with parents of babies under 9 months
• extending the reach of our current programme & delivering taster sessions with established partners (eg Re-Source) and new organisations (eg linking with the Thrive programme at the Bureau).

Creative Curriculum Partnership

We are excited to be part of this Manchester Cultural Education Partnership (MCEP) initiative which sees cultural organisations paired with education establishments across Manchester, aiming to embed creativity within the school curriculum.  For this project, Note Weavers were paired with the Hospital School based at Manchester Children’s Hospital to develop a digital resource which included links to the City of Manchester.  Thus ‘Songs for a Busy Bee’ was born.

Supporting young families’ music making

We are delighted to work in partnership with The Bureau Centre for the Arts in Blackburn on their Youth Music funded programme Shared Sounds, which aims to support young families to take part in music activities.

From June 23rd 2020 Note Weavers provided a free Facebook live session with songs, rhymes and musical games for young children with their parents/carers every Tuesdays morning.  Families took part live or check via the Facebook page or  YouTube channel after the event.

The funding received by The Bureau for the Shared Sounds project was to:

• offer music sessions to different community groups who are working with under 5s and their families
• to support music leaders and early years practitioners to develop their knowledge and experience to lead music activities with young children.

12 recorded Shared Sounds sessions led by Sorrel Harty available to view

Reflections on the Shared Sounds Programme: Blog by Sorrel Harty

Supporting practitioners in providing a musically rich environment for children

Note Weavers are delighted to have been commissioned by Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council to be involved in the delivery of a ESOL Social Integration Project ‘Learning English Together’ [LET]. This is a government funded programme which support adults who are new to learning English to access opportunities more widely in the local community alongside a more formal learning programme. Note Weavers will be part of a team of ‘social mixing’ partners who provide six-week courses for the learners, running weekly music sessions for parents with their young children at The Bureau Centre for the Arts with two courses starting in November 2020 and January 2021.

The LET course delivers English Language learning and support for those learning English at a beginner level who have arrived in the UK in the last three years. The music sessions will offer supported interaction for learners to engage in conversation as they take part in a programme of music activities with their pre-school children.

Supporting practitioners in providing a musically rich environment for children

Throughout the Autumn Term 2018, Note Weavers undertook a 12-week programme of work at a Children’s Centre in an area of multiple deprivation in the North West of England. This project, led by a single music practitioner in partnership with the setting staff was targeted at small groups of children where there was identified need.  Data was collected throughout through the use of zines which each practitioner used to record spontaneous musical activity and observations of the children within group activities.

The aim was to support setting practitioners in providing a musically rich environment for children and their families which they could continue when the practitioner’s visits ended.