Practitioner Profile: Jo Ballard
I’ve been working creatively since finishing my degree in 2000. I’ve experimented with all sorts of different media and I’ve finally found my niche working with early years in music. I moved to Cornwall in 2000 and joined the Eden Project as a guide and workshop facilitator.
I also found Kescana who are a wonderful group of acappela singers. Jo Tagney who leads the group has this big box of songs, with some real gems in there. I had no idea that there was a whole tradition of Cornish song and music. I composed a few songs and it was great to hear the harmonies sung by 12 singers.
When my daughter was born in 2003 a couple of friends suggested that I run music sessions for mothers and toddlers, and Lostwithiel Wild Things came about. Plymouth Music Zone were looking for early years music facilitators so I began working in preschools and reception classes in the Spring and holding children’s folk choirs in primary schools.
I’ve been offered a freelance contract at the Eden Project where I have the flexibility to prepare proposals and deliver a workshop/demonstration/arts and crafts activity. I’ve always worked with natural materials there, looking at ways in which I can highlight plants at the project through making something out of them. Now I’m thinking about holding soundscape music workshops with the families that visit where a musical piece is created in response to a given topic about the environment, whether this might be using the words of a given context percussively, such as recycling, and building on the words used rhythmically, or creating a music piece with ethnic instruments that reflect the jungle, its growth and destruction.
The Eden Project is coming from an interesting place with regard to looking at how people learn. Instead of just giving the public factual stories about plants, they’re looking at how to engage people empathically with the stories of the world, so that the process of learning is a heart/head thing rather than just a mental experience of understanding. I’ve always been passionate about the environmental message and I learnt how to teach/talk to large groups of people at the Eden Project which was crucial to the confidence I now have as a workshop facilitator.
I think that’s the key to self expression; when you do what you do in a truthful way, with enthusiasm, commitment and a love for what you’re doing, when you’re alive and in the moment and able to identify a common denominator, something that everyone can relate to, then that’s true communication. A performer gets it right when all their heart and soul is right there in that moment. To feel what another feels connects people up. It’s love really, and joy in singing and working with groups that the children I work with pick up on.
I think that kids and adults really take to the workshop scenario, where learning is active, rather than passive, and music is a fantastic way of using the senses, to explore the world, especially with early years. It encompasses the whole spectrum of learning- language development, listening, focus, emotion, story, sociability, counting and body coordination.
It’s been interesting to work with families. I’ve run a few music workshops for family fun days, it’s nice to participate creatively with mums, dads and grandparents too, kind of unifying, families meeting each other for the first time, being spontaneous, having fun. Even little things can be so rewarding for everyone, a tiny toddler picking up a beater and banging on a xylophone, a mother suddenly picking up a recorder and playing a tune, losing inhibitions and being yourself in the moment, that’s a nice feeling to be a part of.
If you work as a freelance artist you need recognition from the bodies that might employ you and it’s quite a difficult world to break into. I feel like I’ve been doing creative work with families, with the public for years and not being visible to the people who employ me, I could be doing anything!
So the KEAP ‘Feet in the Clouds’ Early Years music project was what I needed. The aims of the project were to encourage artists and teachers to work together and for the artists taking part to learn from each other and be assessed in their work. It’s good to get feedback, really refreshing not to be alone, and to be engaged in a project with very clear aims and objectives with regard to artists and teachers working together instead of us all being in our compartmentalised boxes.
I’ve been working at Boscastle Preschool with Lynn who has years of experience and is brilliant as a playgroup leader so we can learn from each other. With the door open for discussion and planning the session together, we both found we had common aims with regard to working with children and their development and how we could create musical sessions that are child led and where they are enabled to use their imagination as much as possible.
I’d also like to find out more about the Reggio Emilia approach with early years where all the art mediums are used in conjunction; movement, music, writing, painting, I’d like to do it all.
I actually feel most at home, most real and connected with the art form of dance improvisation, I love watching dance, especially physical theatre. The last solo dance performance I did was ages ago. I taped the Lostwithiel auction on my Dictaphone and danced to it, the words at great speed, the content, all that junk going under the hammer, it was great fun to do and was rather hilarious. I knew the performance was working when one of the kids in the front row started to giggle like mad which started everyone off. Yes, my ambition is to incorporate more dance and movement into the sessions and to move more myself, to exercise, to be fit and healthy feels brilliant.
I’m honing my singing voice still. Singing down a microphone is a challenge for me, to bare your soul to all those people! It makes me feel self conscious but I guess it’s something you learn more about the more you do it. I’m going on a singing course called The Singing Child in August where I can learn about voice work and collect some more songs.
My three year old daughter is of course my inspiration. It’s a fantastic position to be in creatively, I’m right in there with them, with this age group, got the mum’s-eye-view, it’s my world at home and at work and the two blend and compliment each other in a wonderful way.
I always knew I wanted to work with children and I just kept experimenting until I found the right context and setting - it’s lovely work.
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