ABOUT
OUR STORY
We (Nicola, Katie and Rosie) came together in 2020, having recognised our overlapping research interests as well as our mutual passion for family music-making to be valued and supported in this country. Over regular Zoom meetings, we developed our ideas and thinking, and together founded The Family Music Hub!
We teamed up with Early Education in 2022 to deliver the first phase of our work which (thanks to a grant from Youth Music) was an action research project working with librarians, family workers and volunteers in the West Midlands to discover more about their experiences working musically with families on the ground.
In 2023 we were awarded a further grant from Youth Music to develop our organisation and establish our training programmes for family workers, and roll them out across areas of England.
OUR VALUES
We are developing a brand new approach to family music making that puts parents and carers at the centre. Our approach is:
Respect
We acknowledge that everyone is musical and that all those delivering and participating in early childhood music sessions have valuable skills and experiences to share with each other.
Flexible
We aren't interested in a one-size-fits-all approach. We support practitioners to work within their own settings, as they know their families the best.
Nurturing
We want to see the unique musicality of practitioners, parents, carers and young children nurtured in a supportive environment.
Evidence-based
We make research relevant and connect it with practice.
Community Focused
Music connects people, families and communities, and we want to support this to happen more.
OUR TEAM
Rosie Adediran
is a Director of The Family Music Hub and will be taking a lead on resources and content!
Outside of The Family Music Hub, she's an early years and family music practitioner, singer and songwriter. She loves to create new music with family groups, with a special interest in perinatal mental health. She founded award-winning ‘London Rhymes’ in 2015, an initiative that involves collaborating with families to create new songs and rhymes. She was a Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Ideas and Pioneers grantee in 2019, conducting research into the state of music provision across the UK for families, and is passionate about the role that music can play in the lives of families with young children.
Katie Neilson
is a Director of The Family Music Hub, taking a lead on all things research.
She’s also a music teacher working with children from birth to age 11 with a special interest in early childhood music education and research. In 2020, she completed her MA with CREC in which she explored musical parenting and new models of practice for family music classes. Katie has subsequently presented research at RiME 2021 and EUNet MERYC 2022(pdf). She runs her own independent early childhood music practice, Little Bees, but also works nationally as a freelance practitioner training and mentoring EY and Primary school teachers. Katie has worked with Voices Foundation since 2008 and, in 2016, wrote their award winning book Inside Music: Early Years which is used extensively across the country.
Nicola Burke
is a Director of The Family Music Hub and is taking a lead on partnerships and strategy.
She is a respected researcher and consultant, currently the strategic leader of large workforce development initiatives taking place across Leicestershire and Birmingham, involving a range of arts and music organisations and Early Childhood services. She created the award-winning Tune into Listening free online resource and in 2018 wrote Musical Development Matters in the Early Years, a free downloadable resource to complement the EYFS guidance material, Development Matters in the EYFS. Nicola works nationally and internationally to strategically support organisations to develop their early childhood music programmes and initiatives.
Eleanor Rattenbury
is the Communications Lead and Programme Coordinator for The Family Music Hub.
​
Eleanor is an experienced freelance administrator and arts coordinator who has worked with a number of organisations/campaigns across the UK including: Every Copy Counts, Norwich & Norfolk Festival, BE Festival and Arts Connect.
Alongside her work as an arts professional, Eleanor is an experienced facilitator, specialising in dance, physical theatre, immersive and interactive performance. She is passionate about creating arts opportunities for children and young people and finds that it is often the common thread in the work she does.
