SEYM - SoCo Music Project

Sustainable Early Years Music

Sustainable Early Years Music (SEYM) supports the learning and wellbeing of children with additional needs through meaningful and transformational music engagement. Working collaboratively with settings, practitioners, carers, and local authority teams, we have supported hundreds of children and practitioners in specialist schools, nurseries, pre-schools, childminders, and multiple community settings.

Since its beginning in 2019, SEYM has developed from a small school-based project into an established and sought-after part of Early Years/SEND local offer. Having crafted over the years an ambitious strategy for development and community engagement, we have acquired a strong reputation as a local provider among local settings, practitioners, carers and partner organisations.

On a daily basis, neurodiverse children with complex additional needs wake up to a world full of sensory environments and social structures not designed with their needs in mind. They often find simple daily activities, access to community spaces, transitions and expectations confusing, threatening or overwhelming.

Through SEYM we have sought to integrate music facilitation into the wider scope of knowledge and expertise provided by carers and practitioners – presenting music not in terms of mainstream curricular pedagogy, but as central to our emotional, social, learning and sensory experiences. Seeing music as part of living and learning, we support children and the different communities around them. This is key to our vision of a sustainable provision of music engagement less reliant on permanent support from specialists. We believe that caring for children entails caring for and supporting the adults working with them.

SEYM is run by the Southampton based charity SoCo Music Project. It was created by composer, ethnomusicologist and music specialist Dr Ignacio Agrimbau (generally known as ‘Iggy’), who leads the project in collaboration with two project facilitators. SEYM has in the past benefited from funding by Youth Music, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Commissioning Group, as well as match funding contributions from local providers.

What we've achieved

Since 2019…

We have reached over 600 children and 125 practitioners across 20 preschools, 15 childminders and 2 specialist schools through our setting participation and community engagement work.
We have reached over 115 parents through our community engagement and setting participation work.
We have participated in over 30 public events, including conferences, training days, team building days, facilitation and parent-carer engagement days, and contributions to informal community events.

Quotes from our partners

… the drum in the guitar were amazing and it was like a key that opened the door for her to be able to relax and express her sound, and give her freedom just to be in another word. It was like she was being transferred into another place and she could forget all the anxieties … it was just like someone had taken the chains off her. And then for like 20 minutes she could just be what she wanted and happy and relaxed

EY practitioner, about music engagement with a child

We, the Early Years Advisory Teachers, have to date supported the project and advised around suitable settings and models that would fit with in the Southampton Early Years preschools and Nurseries. We have seen the significant impact this project is having in the settings involved and the practitioners who embrace this project. Within our role of Area SENDCo’s we witness the impact on the children who benefit from this. We continue to liaise closely with Iggy and support the ongoing development of this work, finding suitable settings and practitioners to participate. We look forward to seeing how this work can be further developed to include greater numbers, such as training workshops and other EY and Childcare providers.

Member of the EYATs team

Ignacio held our hand through the process of training…giving us a shared language that we wouldn’t have

Assistant Head Teacher, Springwell School

Being part of the project has definitely changed my ‘musical interactive’ practice… It has become a ‘go to’ activity rather than a ‘we should’ activity. It is part of the way we work now.

Early Years Lead, Rosewood School

How does SEYM work?

SEYM’s project architecture consists of four strands: setting participation, community engagement, development and evaluation.

Setting participation entails project activities we do in individual settings. It is based on three interrelated activities: co-facilitation of 1:1 and group music engagement, knowledge-sharing and mentoring with setting practitioners, and data collection for the purposes of evaluation and project development.

An example of setting participation is the mid to long-term co-facilitation and mentoring activities we provide for a pre-school or childminder setting.

Community engagement entails project activities in the wider EY/SEND community rather than on with specific settings. They aim to extend our support to community spaces and informal events, as well as to reinforce and expand our professional network. It is based on four semi-independent areas of activity: wider music engagement facilitation outside formal settings, wider professional development, dissemination and participation in public events, and partnership building. This area of work is key for us to diversify and adapt our offer to changing needs.

Examples of community engagement are contributions to Day Events run by local organisations, short term engagement with practitioners in community settings, participation in conferences, or meetings with project partners.

Development entails improving operational and strategic aspects and expanding the participant groups SEYM reaches. It is based on four interrelated areas of activity: core project improvement, practice development, strategic expansion, and formulating research questions.

Examples of project development include additions to the SEYM Facilitation Toolkit, adapting our work a new type of setting, or improving our mentoring contents and strategies on the basis of feedback we collected over the years.

SEYM Evaluation is based on a series of periodic reviews and evaluation documents that inform both internal and evaluation outlets. They address the extent to which we have me tour outcomes, highlight statistical evidence, and highlight any project weaknesses or possibilities for project development or expansion.