A Ticket To Thrive from London Rhymes
Welcome to our #TicketToThrive campaign. We believe wholeheartedly that doing something creative with your child will benefit you both. We’ve asked some other people who believe in the power of creativity to talk a little about a benefit they have seen when families get creative, and to suggest a simple activity that you can do at home. Today, we hear from Rosie from London Rhymes.
Tell us about London Rhymes: London Rhymes started in 2015 as a singing and songwriting project with parents and young children ages two in a family centre in Hoxton. For me it was a bit of an experiment — I wanted to see what happened when you tried writing songs with new knackered parents and their little ones!
Since then its grown so much and I partnered with charity Creative Futures to step it up — we now have run 7 projects, written over 50 new songs for families and launched a YouTube channel! Central to London Rhymes is a desire to support those in the throes of new parenthood through music and song — it’s an incredible tool!
We now target community settings for our projects — like children’s centres, charities, playgroups, drop-ins — anywhere where new parents congregate, often working with new parents facing challenges like uncertain housing. It’s very informal — we sing songs together, play with instruments and improvise together with our talented musicians (babies make great improvisors!) as well as write new songs together — a collaboration between myself, musician, parent and child. It’s pretty mad!
In March we launched a YouTube channel which contains a selection of the original songs we’ve been writing over the past few years for families to enjoy together, beautifully animated by an artist called Claire Fauche. Even though these songs were written with small groups of parents in various corners of London, it’s our dream that these songs will be used, sung and enjoyed by families all over the place — it’s the universality of parenthood regardless of background or circumstance that’s reflected in this collection of songs.
Ticket To Thrive is all about encouraging families to something creative together. What do families and children gain from coming to your sessions? By coming to a session, whether its a London Rhymes thing, or something else that I’m leading (@mama_sings_rosie), there’s something really special about a beautiful shared experience, where someone is facilitating that process of creativity and togetherness. I mostly work on funded projects, where we’re able to reach communities that might not otherwise have the opportunity to access those kinds of experiences.
But, in coming to a session, or accessing our music from home, our biggest hope that we’re inspiring families to use music in their everyday lives. We want our songs to offer real value for learning, building healthy strong attachments in families, in encouraging creative play at home, in establishing routines, and in being exposed to a range of styles and instruments. That doesn’t make a parent feel like they’ve lost themselves in a sea of twinkly sounds and synthesised effects!
And when you look at some of the research out there, it’s really incredible… here’s a bit: babies can hear their mother’s voice from around 26 weeks in utero, and in one study, babies showed a preference for the mother’s voice straight after birth. We sing lullabies to our new babies the world over, and have done for millennia. As new parents, we subconsciously match the early preferences of our babies through our vocalisations — which (even if not a ‘song’) are very melodic, like singing — baby talk! That instinct that usually kicks as parents in to sing anything and everything to our new babies, is well founded. It helps foster bonding and build secure attachments — and this in turn has a huge impact on a child, right into their adult lives. Moving into toddler territory, a song regularly gets me out of a sticky situation! It can change an atmosphere instantly, and diffuse a meltdown like nothing else.. it’s also a great distraction tool, and a useful way to establish routines within the family. Not to mention the speech and language, confidence-building, social skills and learning benefits for young children which are off the scale
Singing with your babies at home can also play a really crucial role for women suffering from post-natal depression or other perinatal mental health issues. A study recently showed a quicker rate of recovery for sufferers that took part in regular singing activity with their babies (Fancourt, Perkins 2017) and I’ve seen this first hand, having done quite a lot of work on projects specifically for women suffering from PND.
How can families get some of those same benefits at home? Sing! See above! There’s such power in the singing voice. You might lack confidence or just feel a bit silly, if singing wasn’t something they really did before having a baby. But do it in your own way and and try to find music that you like, rather than the stuff you assume your baby / toddler will enjoy… I think we underestimate our smallest people with the quality of some of the stuff that’s out there for ‘them’ — its enough to make you go mad!
Rosie Adediran is an established singer, songwriter and music leader, and is the founder and leader of ‘London Rhymes’. She loves working with parents and their small people, creating beautiful new songs and sounds. Rosie also launched ‘Mama Sings’ in 2017, under which she writes music, blogs and hosts events. You can watch all of London Rhymes brilliant original music on their YouTube channel, or download it from Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, or GooglePlay. You can also find out more from their website, or follow them on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. To join Rosie at a live event, then head to the ‘Mama Sings’ website, or follow them on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Let’s Play London shines a spotlight on the best theatre and live performance for Under 5s in London. Find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
