It was fantastic to catch up with 8 of our Interactive Music-Makers at last week’s online CPD Event.  Participants included graduates from our Interactive Music-Making training from as far back at 2015, 2018 and 2019, alongside some of our current trainees; one is currently finishing her Music Therapy training, which she started a few years after her IMM training.

My enthusiasm has returned and I’m quite excited to start up music sessions once more. Listening to others gives you more confidence as you realise you’re not the only one to have doubts and problems.

As ever, there were opportunities to share experiences and discuss challenges when running IMM sessions with young children:  How do you support a child to hold a musical instrument, if they are inclined to throw it after the briefest of exploration?  And how might you reduce the chances of the other children in the group copying this action?  How do you keep your activities feeling fresh?  Or respond to a child who wanders from the group and appears to disengage from your music-making?  Once a group of children is readily interacting with the session leader, how do you encourage them to connect and interact with each other as well? 

It’s nice to listen to how others are dealing with different situations and activities they’re using.

Of course there have been disruptions to practice along the way, but without these we would have had over 20 years of collective IMM experience to share between us as we thought about these challenges! 

Thank you to everyone for sharing their ideas so generously and to the graduates who offered words of wisdom to our trainees as they complete their Practical Assignments and start preparing to present their experiences to the course moderators, early years Managers and fellow trainees in April.

Refreshing, gives you new ideas. I learnt a new song from other IMM participants. It was brilliant.

Our next CPD event will be in Summer 2022, so please keep an eye on our Facebook page, or on our Interactive Music-Making page on our website for details.

If you couldn’t make this one but would like any advice or support, please get in touch with us at any time.