Abstract

     Sound is integral to our experience of place, to our feeling of being here, being somewhere, although we may not know it. Young children responded enthusiastically within the project ‘A sense of place: an investigation of sound’, a project conceived to make the sounds of place explicit, to focus on experience of sound in the children’s familiar kindergarten environments and in places nearby.

     The Early Learning Centre in Abbotsford, Melbourne, is in an acoustically diverse environment – close to the Yarra River, near busy Studley Park Road and the bridge to Kew, and a short walk from the Collingwood Children’s Farm, and the project aimed to explore this Centre’s particular sonic situation. A group of five year old children, several staff and a ‘sound practitioner’ engaged in sound and soundscape inquiry in and around the Centre, they made listening and recording excursions to nearby sites, reflected on sound through words and images and created a soundmap as a final representation of their experience of sound and place. Simple methods, incorporating approaches of other educators/artists in the field of acoustic ecology, and a sequence of key questions were utilised to help focus children’s listening during group activities. The intention was not to impose adult concepts of sound but to illuminate what the children might already know – for children’s informal understandings to emerge, then for adults and children together to work with sound in a co-constructive way.

Biography

     Helen Dilkes is a musician, educator, and researcher. Helen’s current interests are in educative/therapeutic work focusing on gesture and sound, improvisation and environments for people with complex communicational needs, research about experience of sound in health care settings, and investigative projects about sound with children. Her professional life has spanned orchestral flute playing, instrumental teaching, music and movement education, lecturing and research in music education.

     Jan Deans is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Melbourne. Her position encompasses Director of the Faculty of Education's research and demonstration Early Learning Centre and lecturer/researcher within the early childhood unit within the Department of Learning and Educational Development. Jan is a long-time advocate for children learning through dance and other arts and her speciality interests extend to early childhood curriculum and assessment of young children. She has worked extensively in early childhood, primary, tertiary, and special education and has published a number of articles and co-authored a book entitled "Come and Join the Dance: a creative approach to movement for children with special needs".

     Robert Brown is a visual arts lecturer and the Project Development Manager at The University of Melbourne's Early Learning Centre. Robert has taught locally and internationally in early childhood centres, schools and tertiary institutions and has expertise in early childhood curriculum, teacher knowledge and arts-based teaching and learning. Robert curates Boorai: The Children's Art Gallery which has been established by The University of Melbourne's Early Learning Centre to present exhibitions that stimulate and challenge audiences to recognize and value, the personal, social and cultural comments expressed by young children through the arts and language. The outcomes of the 'Sense of Place' project will form a Boorai exhibition in 2003.