It was great to see 4 of our interactive music-makers at the last of this year’s four CPD events this week.  Some participants have continued running IMM sessions since completing their IMM training, others have been inspired to re-start sessions more recently and it’s been rewarding to hear these events have helped them keep opportunities to access interactive music-making sessions open to 1,567 young children from different London borough to the highlands of Scotland, via Bedfordshire and Bradford! 

In this week’s session, we discussed how to think about aims for children who are showing the significant developmental delays that are being noticed among young children up and down the country.  We recalled the ways the different theorists integral to our interactive music-making approach think about child development, such as Piaget, Stern, Erikson and Vygotsky, and how looking at traditional developmental milestone frameworks can help us identify the way a child’s skills might be at different levels in different developmental domains and how we can use that insight to identify achievable goals to work towards in our IMM sessions.  Ideas were shared about how to make the most of drums with a group for whom call-and-response or copying is a challenge:  One idea was about using a simple sung line to invite each child to explore their drum (“Who’s that banging on the drum there, who’s that making their sound?”).  This simple structure encourages listening, initiation, participation and creative self-expression.  If you add a second sung line, responding to each child when they play (“Caitlin’s banging on the drum there, Caitlin’s playing her sound!”) you can extend the activity further, strengthening the participating child’s sense of self and self-worth, building peer awareness among the other children in the session – they might even tell you who is playing the drum! – and sowing the seeds of turn-taking.

I found it valuable especially specific ideas from other practitioners and it is good not to feel isolated. It is encouraging and it is good to hear we all face similar challenges.

CPD attendee

We are looking forward to connecting with more interactive music-makers at next year’s CPD series but if you’re an interactive music-maker who’d like support with your sessions in the meantime, please email elsahariades@musicastherapy.org to get in touch