NYMAZ

Click on the photographs to see them larger
All images (c) Tony Bartholomew 2008

About this project

Musical Storytimes is a flagship project, now in its third year. Working in collaboration with North Yorkshire County Council Library Service the sessions use favourite books as a great starting point for fun musical activities for under 5s. The aims of the project are twofold. Firstly to introduce children to a range of musical instruments and styles and to provide them with opportunities to express themselves creatively through music, thus building their confidence, coordination, communication and listening skills. Secondly, to encourage children, parents and carers to access their local library for fun, educational activities and to use this as a way of building and strengthening links between the library and the local community.

In 2007-08 the project provided early years and pre-school settings from across the whole of North Yorkshire with the opportunity to attend a series of Musical Storytimes sessions in one of twenty different libraries. Six different artists and ensembles each delivered twenty 30-minute sessions in ten different libraries, aimed at groups of up to fifteen children aged between 3 and 5 years.

"A new experience for my child and he listened and joined in with the story and music. he talked about his experience to friend and family afterwards and I feel these sessions had a great impact on him." - Parent

Each session was based around a book selected from a list supplied by the library service and the musicians worked closely with library staff to create their own interpretations of the selected books. Some chose to set the books to original scores incorporating fun musical games and opportunities for the children to join in, others used the themes in the books to create musical journeys involving jungles and runaway trains.

The strong partnership with the Library Service has been vital to the success of the project and has enabled the development of the initial idea into an effective and engaging programme of work for the whole county.

In 2008-09 the project expanded to include family learning activities and sessions for children identified as being at risk - this included children with special educational needs, looked after children and children from areas of economic disadvantage.

2008-09 also saw the introduction of continuing professional development (CPD) activities within the project. This included joint planning sessions where musicians and library staff worked together to develop session content and a half day training session for library staff on working with young children with special educational needs.

In response to feedback from library staff, 2009-10 has seen the development of further strands of activity that support national initiatives such as the Summer Reading Challenge, Family Learning Month and Bookstart. CPD continues to be an important element of the programme, with training for artists and a session for library staff on making junk instruments.