Threshold activity: what happens if you (literally as well as metaphorically) leave the door open…

I’ve just recently finished a wonderful early year’s child led Music Champions project working with an early year’s practitioner at the Belgrave Children’s Centre. The centre itself is bright, airy and welcoming with a ‘happy’ feel, friendly reception staff and very open minded and dedicated workers, so it was easy to fit well into the environment. The ethos is very encouraging and non-judgemental. In the ‘Stay and Play’ sessions where I was working phone use by parents and carers is actively discouraged so this is also helpful.

The initial sessions were quite challenging as there are two rooms with a short ‘corridor’ space between filled with books and toys, so also a playspace, and then an outside space which could be accessed via a door in either of the 2 rooms. It’s a drop in and also totally free flowing in terms of movement between rooms. One room is more ‘baby’ in terms of what’s set up in there, and the other more for older children (including usually some sort of ‘painting’ or ‘making’ station). The centre had decided the music project would be in the ‘baby room’ part of the space. I had to learn to work in a way that was quite flexible as people arrived at different times. The first half an hour was especially busy with ‘arriving’, children and adults moved from room to room and equipment got moved around with them. As winter turned to summer the outside space got more and more popular too so there was a LOT of ‘in and out’.

For the first couple of sessions I tried to keep the door to the room I was in shut. This wasn’t how it had been before and caused confusion and puzzlement. It also didn’t really ‘work’ as people kept opening it and not shutting it again and my attempts, aided by my partner, to stop egg shakers/sticks or various sorts of small percussion from ‘disappearing’ or to get people to keep it shut were mostly in vain. The ‘tidying up’ part of this project was always quite tricky and we did ‘lose’ about six egg shakers during it. I lost one of my personal ones in the first session, although it got ‘found’ again somewhere around session three!

Small children move very fast sometimes, it’s not always easy to get whatever they have in their hand before they go somewhere else, and when there are 100 plus people around you can’t always find them again until said object has been put ‘somewhere else’. As the musician I couldn’t be chasing around after children and parents/carers varied in their watchfulness and agility. We had a similar problem with sticks, this got worse. As the weather got better and the outside area was used more heavily sticks sometimes got dunked in water and sand and so weren’t very useable when the child came back into the room!. This is just an inevitable aspect of working in early years and has to be ‘factored in’…

As I got less concerned about trying to keep the door shut (the staff in the other room didn’t like it either although my partner and I had initially decided it was better like that) I started to notice something I’m now calling ‘threshold activity’. With this group in particular there can be a ‘hesitation to do/try’ new things and also a tricky ‘coming into the room’ aspect when some children aren’t sure, or hesitate, or react to a new person/ activity/ layout by sort of backing out or backing into a carer’s legs or turning around or wanting to be picked up….. Leaving the door open facilitated easier entry and also allowed both children and parents to stand and watch either before or instead of joining any particular musical activity. On the days when it was very hot the door to the outside space was also left open and a lot of this happened. A lot of learning happens by watching at this stage of development and the threshold was a good watching space.

Some pairs of adults/children never fully entered the room and sat to make music but most definitely participated in the sessions from the threshold. Some joined in later the same day or later on in the sessions. I have nothing but subjective observations for this and no idea of the numbers who moved from threshold to in the room but some definitely did and some definitely didn’t. It was particularly useful space for parents with special needs children I feel, some of whom found sitting and ‘doing’ tricky. I tried to pay attention to what was happening and who was standing in the threshold space, sometimes a child would watch a long time, standing unaccompanied, and some of the less confident parents also used it, but there was a lot going on and I didn’t manage to get any clear idea of how many used it as a transition to coming into the room and how many simply used it as a space to watch or participate on some level.

One of the other things that happened was ‘dancing in the doorway’ during drumming. I developed a ‘drumming module’ as part of the sessions that generally happened before tidy up time and the last 10/15 mins of singing before going home. This format was quite fixed, they had always done that and only once in the time I was there did it get ‘skipped’ on a particularly hot day when my ‘partner’ wasn’t there and another play worker decided more time outside was better – some parents still came in and sat on the carpet and expected to sing even so, which just shows how strong the ‘format’ was! After some very noisy early sessions the drums wouldn’t be out in the space until we said ‘now it’s time for drumming’ … The joy caused by getting them out, handling them and anticipating drumming became part of the joy of the drumming activity itself. Putting them away was then part of general ‘tidy up time’ and didn’t cause as much unhappiness as trying to put them away without putting everything else away at the same time.

Drumming could take a variety of forms and I kept it flexible so it could take 10-20mins depending on what else was happening and how much engagement there was. I usually started with a ‘lets make lots of noise’ activity and then do a bit of more structured music making, nudging the group into loud/quiet, stop/start and a variety of other activities depending on what they were doing. We would often do a combination of drumming and clapping as clapping started happening spontaneously, so I incorporated it. Sometimes one particular child would be very enthusiastic so we’d watch that… Often when we began people would then come in from other rooms, including sometimes the health visitor. Some would come right in and some would stand in the doorway.

Quite a bit of percussive activity and dancing happened as threshold activity during this time as my partner and I would hand out various pieces of percussion to those standing in the doorways or around the edges. Some then came in and sat, some didn’t. both adults and children would dance or ‘jig about’ on the thresholds too. A lot of dancing happened as threshold activity, much more than actually happened in the room. Some dancing happened outside or in the other room also I was told.

One of my favourite pieces of threshold activity was a group of three who only came once. Two women, one of whom had a smallish baby, four months if I remember correctly. I was unsure which of them was the mother. Karishma didn’t know them and they spent a lot of time talking to her at the start of the session. They had a boy of about 3/4 with them who fairly obviously had special needs and who was very loud and active in the space and quite ‘disruptive’. The energy of both adults with the boy was quite cross and ‘frazzled’ and they felt ‘tired’ and were holding his wrist rather than his hand and almost dragging him from one place to another (although I’ve spent a fair bit of time in W Africa and this is normal behaviour, they were all African heritage). The baby was being adored and (surreptitiously because of the notices saying ‘no phones no photos’) photographed with both of them. They were outside when we started drumming and immediately came and stood in the doorway for the whole session. They didn’t want any percussion but the little boy danced very joyously and both the women (he was standing, and then dancing between them) ‘lit up’ and were smiling at him and encouraging him and laughing and giving him a lot of positive attention. The whole ‘feel’ of that trio was totally changed although they didn’t ever come into the room.

This project has made me rethink both engagement and closed doors. The open doors also allowed the ‘ripple effect’ of the music making to be bigger. It was heard and reacted to by adults and children in the other room, the outside area, the sandpit, reception etc… We did twice try taking the drumming outside but it was too fraught with water and sand on sticks and hands so we stopped doing that. It was easy to see how much the outside play area enjoyed it however, little ‘wiggles’, or jumping/clapping in rhythm. The positive effect of keeping the doors open was worth a few ruined sticks and the loss of some egg shakers…