AEC-SMS (2017 – 2021) – Creative Europe Network

Early Childhood Music Education Working Group

The Working Group on Early Childhood Music education worked on raising awareness for this important type of pedagogy in higher music education institutions, in music schools and in other music education contexts.

Objectives

• Increase the quality of early childhood music education, and thus extend the audience of tomorrow.

Outputs

Guidebook for Early Childhood Music Education

The ECME Working Group wrote a guidebook that aims at offering some ideas from literature and their own experience as early childhood music practitioners and researchers, with the hope that it will stimulate interest in the magical world of music in the early years. The book shall help to establish music lessons with young children all over Europe. For teachers who have to earn their living with their profession, this can even open up a new facet in their professional portfolio.

Webinar on Early Childhood Music Education

The ECME Working Group hosted a webinar with the aim to both introduce the topic of ECME to participants from countries with no or only little tradition for this kind of pedagogy, while at the same time bringing together different European perspectives on the topic for participants with more experience in the field.

The group met in presence and online numerous times of the course of the project; contributed to the AEC’s, the European Music School Union‘s (EMU) and the European Association for Music in School´s (EAS) annual congresses and events and collected data on ECME practices in European music schools.

Working group members

The ECME Working Group was composed of representatives of AEC, EMU and EAS

• Natassa Economidou – University of Nicosia
• Ulla Piispanen – Author, lecturer & teacher
• Michael Dartsch – Hochschule für Musik Saarbrücken
• Till Skoruppa – EMU, Working group coordinator