Southampton music charity, SoCo Music, has been awarded £100,000 funding by Youth Music to support music making for children under five in the city.
SoCo was set up in Southampton in 2008. It is a not-for-profit music organisation, providing inclusive music-making opportunities and supporting the music-making sector, across Hampshire.
For the last three years, the charity has been working with schools, nurseries and Southampton City Council early years team, to bring music to the lives of children with additional needs, many of whom face complex communication barriers and social isolation, by developing skills in the staff and organisations who support them.
The charity has created tools, frameworks and guides, allowing play workers, teachers, teaching assistants and nursery staff – all non music specialists – to feel confident in incorporating music into their work.
This new work will extend that support to childminders who, by working outside formal education settings, do not have access to embedded training at work. SoCo will go out to them, and ultimately, the children they support.
In time, the charity also intends to create a Stay and Play facility, and to collaborate with the new Family Hubs distributed across the city.
SoCo CEO Matt Salvage said: “We are delighted to have been awarded this funding from Youth Music to extend our previous work around music in early years setting to childminders. Childminders, by the very nature of their work, sit outside structures like schools and nurseries which provide embedded training and development for their staff.”
This project is supported by Youth Music and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
- In Common is not for profit. We rely on donations from readers to keep the site running. Could you help to support us for as little as 25p a week? Please help us to carry on offering independent grass roots media. Visit: https://www.patreon.com/incommonsoton