Take 6 - folk songs and singing games for children
Hundreds of folk songs and tunes, representing a huge swathe of English traditional music heritage, have been ‘given back’ to the communities that gave birth to them.
Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), Take 6 was an 18-month archival, educational and community project which was completed in August 2009. 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.
The six collections were:
- George Gardiner: Collection of over 1600 folk songs collected mainly in Hampshire 1905 to 1909.
- Anne G. Gilchrist: Collection of 214 folk songs plus children’s singing games, Lancashire Morris tunes, songs from customs, sea shanties, carols and street cries, all collected from the 1890s to the 1920s, mainly in Lancashire.
- Janet Blunt: Collection, of morris and country dances and songs, collectedin Oxfordshire 1907 - 1931.
- George Butterworth: southern Englandand Yorkshire.
- Francis Collinson: from the southern counties of England.
- Hammond Collection: mainly from Dorset.
The first two of these collections (Gardiner and Gilchrist) were used as the source material for projects in primary schools and communities in Hampshire and Lancashire where the songs were originally noted. Materials from the Janet Blunt collection were used with schools in Camden, London.
Take 6 was EFDSS Education’s first national education projectspringing from the Society’s unrivalled archival collections.
Folk Song, Singing Games and Traditional Projects were developed in 12 primary schools to pilot the best use of these materials to support the contemporary curriculum. Projects encompassed singing, creative song writing, dance, playground singing games and rhymes. They were specifically designed to support several areas of the curriculum such as music, literacy, history, PE / dance, PHSE & Citizenship and to bring the songs to life for young people in a way that was fresh, dynamic and relevant.
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 areaccessible via FunWithFolk.com, our dedicated website of free folk song resources aimed at children, and TeachingFolkSong.com, dedicated to teachers and educators.
Folk song workshops were also delivered for adults and families at Petersfield Museum in Hampshire.
The artists involved in delivering the Take 6 Education programme were:
- Sue Bousfield
- Pete Coe
- Carolyn Robson
- Paul Sartin
- Roger Watson
- Laurel Swift
- Edward Hicks
- Roswitha Chesher
- Deborah Newbold
- Sarah Morgan
- Doc Rowe
The Take 6 Education Programme culminated in an Education Celebration Day on 2nd July 2009, at Cecil Sharp House which featured an afternoon concert of folk songs, singing games and dances, performed by children from 2 Hampshire primary schools, 3 London schools and film of children from Lancashire,who have all participated in Take 6. The concert was followed by a Folk Song and Singing Games Workshop for Music Educators attended by around 30 leaders, teachers and music educators from across London and as far afield as Oxford, Kent and Devon.
Earlier in 2008 EFDSS Education successfully piloted the use of the materials in London, in conjunction with Redriff Primary School in Southwark which has a history of promoting singing games – an annual festival there in the 1960s led to an album of recordings on the prestigious Topic Records label. Work at the school was multi-layered encompassing a Singing Games project with all classes, from Reception to Year 6, and a complementary oral history and reminiscence project with local older people.
The project concluded with a wonderful afternoon ‘sharing’ event in the school playground where all children took part in performing past and present playground singingand clapping games, some children performing Maypole dances, and ending with a mini ceilidh for all children, staff, parents and visitors with music from Faustus, nominated for best group in the BBC Folk Awards 2009.
In June2009, EFDSS was invited back by Redriff School to run a second Singing Games Festival project for its pupils and those at two of its neighbouring primary schools.
Access the Take 6 collections online.
