Page 30 - Glasbenopedagoški zbornik Akademije za glasbo v Ljubljani / The Journal of Music Education of the Academy of Music in Ljubljana: Mostovi med formalnim in neformalnim glasbenim izobraževanjem, leto 15, zvezek 31 / Year 15, Issue 31, 2019
P. 30
SBENOPEDAGOŠKI ZBORNIK, 31. zvezek
opportunity to do that was our next story – The Night Gardener by T. and E. Fan. It is a
story about the town transformation by a mysterious gardener who is sculpting tree tops in
the street during the night. A boy named William, who lives in the orphanage in the street,
is observing the change that it makes for the people living in this street and the creation of a
true community. At the end he founds his purpose by learning how to garden from the
gardener. The story carries a message about the importance of the community,
participation and respecting the nature, so it was a good chance for us to think carefully
about the follow-up part, combining elements of music, art, ecology and citizenship
education in it. Considering the fact that this children’s book has not much text and there is
a lot said by illustrations, we had to develop almost the whole text and several additional
characters. As a teacher, I was facilitating the process, but one of the students worked on
the text. Also, it was the first time we had a guest expert from ‘outside’ who wanted to join
us. Eva Simona Kulenoviæ, a psychologist with an educational background in art therapy,
performed several workshops with us and helped a lot with the artistic follow-up part we
did with children who can see. This was the first story we didn’t do first with the visually
impaired audience, so it was designed originally for the children who can see. We
performed it for children and their parents in the woods Tuškanac, because we wanted to
share the whole ‘community idea’ of the story with children and grown-ups together.
Nature inspired us to collect leaves and fruits from the woods and bring it to the workshop
with visually impaired children, so it was the first time we started to think more about the
sense of touch we have to implement more in our workshops.
In each story, we had a moment when children meet the instruments we bring with us
when visually impaired children had a chance to touch the instrument and feel the material
together with the characteristic sounds. This was the time when we started to think about
the value of touch in some other parts of the story, so we performed The Night Gardener in
the Vinko Bek Center on the floor covered with leaves and fruits from nature. Children
gave us very positive feedback about that, touching the ground and feeling the nature,
which gave them a sense of the place where the story happens. Since we started with more
interdisciplinarity with this story, the idea was to make sculptures of their own small trees
with clay, but unfortunately, we couldn’t realize this due to some material costs we
couldn’t afford to ourselves. The musical part was covered with songs from the children’s
album Mjesto za mene by duo Meritas, as well as some well-known classical pieces (for
example, The Wild Horseman, op. 68. No.8 by R. Schumann). For additional sounds, we
played on various instruments and everyday objects (for example, we sang a canon
playing the rhythmic accompainment on scissors).
The beginning of the academic year 2019/2020 was the time when I decided to have two
groups of people to make the program grow. A new one, made of people from the NGO,
took The Nutcracker as a start and had two workshops – one in the Vinko Bek Center and
the other one in children’s library. An “old” one, had some significant changes because
some of the students graduated in the meantime. In the pedagogical sense, there was a shift
made by the fact that we got several students from instrumental departments who joined
the program, which ensured that all the members of the group play and sing during the
performance. Considering the fact that we decided to go deeper into the material and
explore every aspect of the workshop, it was extremely valuable that we got a stable group
28
opportunity to do that was our next story – The Night Gardener by T. and E. Fan. It is a
story about the town transformation by a mysterious gardener who is sculpting tree tops in
the street during the night. A boy named William, who lives in the orphanage in the street,
is observing the change that it makes for the people living in this street and the creation of a
true community. At the end he founds his purpose by learning how to garden from the
gardener. The story carries a message about the importance of the community,
participation and respecting the nature, so it was a good chance for us to think carefully
about the follow-up part, combining elements of music, art, ecology and citizenship
education in it. Considering the fact that this children’s book has not much text and there is
a lot said by illustrations, we had to develop almost the whole text and several additional
characters. As a teacher, I was facilitating the process, but one of the students worked on
the text. Also, it was the first time we had a guest expert from ‘outside’ who wanted to join
us. Eva Simona Kulenoviæ, a psychologist with an educational background in art therapy,
performed several workshops with us and helped a lot with the artistic follow-up part we
did with children who can see. This was the first story we didn’t do first with the visually
impaired audience, so it was designed originally for the children who can see. We
performed it for children and their parents in the woods Tuškanac, because we wanted to
share the whole ‘community idea’ of the story with children and grown-ups together.
Nature inspired us to collect leaves and fruits from the woods and bring it to the workshop
with visually impaired children, so it was the first time we started to think more about the
sense of touch we have to implement more in our workshops.
In each story, we had a moment when children meet the instruments we bring with us
when visually impaired children had a chance to touch the instrument and feel the material
together with the characteristic sounds. This was the time when we started to think about
the value of touch in some other parts of the story, so we performed The Night Gardener in
the Vinko Bek Center on the floor covered with leaves and fruits from nature. Children
gave us very positive feedback about that, touching the ground and feeling the nature,
which gave them a sense of the place where the story happens. Since we started with more
interdisciplinarity with this story, the idea was to make sculptures of their own small trees
with clay, but unfortunately, we couldn’t realize this due to some material costs we
couldn’t afford to ourselves. The musical part was covered with songs from the children’s
album Mjesto za mene by duo Meritas, as well as some well-known classical pieces (for
example, The Wild Horseman, op. 68. No.8 by R. Schumann). For additional sounds, we
played on various instruments and everyday objects (for example, we sang a canon
playing the rhythmic accompainment on scissors).
The beginning of the academic year 2019/2020 was the time when I decided to have two
groups of people to make the program grow. A new one, made of people from the NGO,
took The Nutcracker as a start and had two workshops – one in the Vinko Bek Center and
the other one in children’s library. An “old” one, had some significant changes because
some of the students graduated in the meantime. In the pedagogical sense, there was a shift
made by the fact that we got several students from instrumental departments who joined
the program, which ensured that all the members of the group play and sing during the
performance. Considering the fact that we decided to go deeper into the material and
explore every aspect of the workshop, it was extremely valuable that we got a stable group
28
