PLAY, MUSIC, CO-CREATION, OUTDOOR LIFE, AESTHETIC PROCESSES

Region: South
Municipality: Esbjerg
By: Bramming
Year: 2020
Artist: Tina Drejergaard
DAILY OFFER: Children's universe Bramming, Rainbow

In the Rainbow it was the "big children's group" that had to participate in the programme.

Before we started, we had asked the children to bring three recycled items from home that they thought had "a cool sound".

There was everything from capsules to vinegar jars and cardboard rolls.

The first time we had a visit from Tina (the artist), the children had plenty of time to experiment and explore. Later they were given tasks/suggestions on how things could make sounds - like blowing, rolling etc. The children were very engaged in the play and in really good flow, where we adults almost felt redundant.

We had two children with challenges in this group, and we didn't expect them to be able to concentrate and stay with the project for long, but they experimented and played with sounds on an equal footing with their peers.

Some of the children also started playing music on their own initiative, and before long more were joining in - before long they were playing in time and we had our own little orchestra.

Afterwards, the children brought several items to the box on their own initiative, and proudly showed them to Tina when she returned.

Now the children knew the framework of what they were supposed to do and had found out that it was ok to destroy things in favour of different sounds.

We gave the children a task where they had to find good, exciting, and cool sounds in the playground.

For the next while, the children were very attentive to sounds such as water running in the gutter, rolling stones, etc.

The programme was then interrupted due to the Corona shutdown and by the time the programme could be restarted, the group of children had started pre-school.

The process has generally been very good and exciting.

We are particularly surprised by how well our out-of-touch children have coped with the process, something we will take with us. A surprising number of the boys have grown as a result of the programme.

We've talked a lot about how we as adults need to learn to sit on our hands a bit and follow the children's lead more.

We've become very concerned that you can take one thing and then you can make it into something else, rather than seeing it as destroying something. A lot of the kids have been taken by that and actually us adults as well. So now we've started a new project where we take some materials out of pallets etc. and then the children get to make new things while we try to follow their lead and play with them.