Take 6 - folk songs and singing games for children

Supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund, Take 6 was the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s (EFDSS) first national education project springing from the unrivalled archive collections of its Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. It was designed as a strategic programme to pilot the use of heritage folk song and dance collections in primary schools and explore the ways this material could best:

• support the curriculum

• benefit the children

• celebrate local distinctiveness.

Take 6 reached children in 12 primary schools in Hampshire, London and Lancashire over an 18 month period, finishing in August 2009. Over 1000 children and around 120 teachers directly took part in school workshops. Around 4300 children and parents attended ‘sharing’ events as audience members. At these events participating children performed the folk songs and dances they had learnt during Take 6, as well as sharing background information and stories about the songs, collectors and source singers. Two folk song workshops were also delivered for adults and families at Petersfield Museum in Hampshire.

Learning resources were developed with participating schools, investigating and demonstrating how these heritage materials can be best used to support the curriculum and other key contemporary educational concerns. These resources are accessible via FunWithFolk.com, our dedicated website of free folk song resources aimed at children and teachers.

Through Take 6, EFDSS has archived and conserved six unique manuscript collections and made them more widely accessible to the public, through digitising and putting the collections on line. You can access the complete collections online on the Take 6 website.

Find out more about Take 6 in the project booklet (downloadable below).