The last workshop took place in January 2025 at Kårstua barnehage. Here we had a workshop for a small group of children aged 5 and 6 years. In addition to the children, there were always between three and five kindergarten staff in the room together who participated.
We musicians had a planning session two days in advance for both this workshop and the workshop we had two days before this one at Trondheim Public Library.
In this workshop, there are three interesting moments to take a closer look at. The first is something that happens during the first exercise, Drawing can become sound. We show them a drawing with a lot of green dots and ask what sound this can make. Immediately after asking the question, one of the children answers “blue”. I follow up by asking what the color blue sounds like. Another child answers dark, while a third child continues by saying that "the color pink is thin". I continue to ask about the drawing if it has any pink or blue in it, and one child continue saying "no green", and another child continue saying "green is grass". Jenny continue the conversation with asking how the grass sound like. Here it is relevant to know that grass in Norwegian is gress, because the child answers Jenny's question by making the sound "grrrrrr".
The next moment happens in connection with the previous one. After the conversation about the colors, we steer the conversation in a different direction, talking about what the drawing is and whether there are many or few. Jenny then asks if they think one long sound is appropriate, or if many short sounds are appropriate. I suggest that Jenny can play some short sounds, and afterwards Nicolas can play some long sounds, and then we can do a show of hands on which sound we think fits the drawing best. Jenny starts by playing some short sounds. When she has finished, Nicolas continues by playing longer sounds. During his playing one of the children starts making a sound joining him in the music making
We can't know why this child starts singing during this performance, but what it does show is that interaction and co-creations are very present. At this moment, no one is shushing the child, all adults in the room are just letting it unfold. Perhaps the child thought Nicolas wasn't making the right sound from the drawing, or maybe the sound the child is making is just a spontaneous reaction to Nicolas playing. Either way, this moment shows that creating and reacting to each other is something we are all born with, and can be done despite age and knowledge.
The last moment worth zooming in on, is something that happens in the exercise, Sound can become drawings. After the children have had a chance to draw while we play, we musicians split up and sit down on the floor to talk to the children one by one about their drawings. At some point Jenny points to a drawing and asks “Is it a troll?”. The child who made the drawing replies “No, it's me”. Jenny laughs and continues saying the drawing looks a bit like him (Workshop #8, 29.20").
This example is just one of many where we musicians assume what a drawing is based on our prejudices. The danger with this is that we can quickly hurt the children by saying the wrong thing and that we can also steer the interpretation of their drawings in the wrong direction. This shows that we need to be more aware when we ask the children questions about their drawings and that we should not, as far as possible, try to avoid asking if they have drawn specific things.
For this workshop, we had few children and enough time to really immerse ourselves in their drawings. In addition, we changed how the children sat when they drew the drawings in both workshops #7 and #8. In the previous workshops, the children sat on either side of the long sheet of paper. This has created problems when we have played the drawings afterwards since some of the drawings have been upside down. For workshops #7 and #8, all the children sat on the same side of the drawings, and thus we could easily tell what was top and bottom on all the drawings.
Below you can see a selection of four drawings by four children from the workshop. In the first drawing from the left, the child has drawn a potato, the character The Grok from the Moomin universe and “Ormen lange” which is a character from a Norwegian children's song. It translates to "The snake long" or "The worm long". When talking about his drawing collectively afterwards he explained that the potato takes the snake(Workshop #8, 32.25") The snake or worm bears some resemblance to the figure in our graphic score that we showed them before they were allowed to draw. During the exploration of our graphic score the children already mentioned words like snake, “long snake” and similar associations (Workshop 8#, 15.05")
In the next drawing the child has made a "Tjo hei". This is not a thing but an exclamation we use in Norway often expresses the sudden, overflowing joy of life. Nicolas asks the child who has made this drawing how the "Tjo hei" would sound and he first answer "I don't know" but after a small break he says "tuba sound" (Workshop #8, 30.28")
The third drawing is of three things, a cat, a catapult and a flower. The child went on to explain that the cat was dirty and it was also very important to point out that the cat had whiskers, which you can clearly see in the drawing (Workshop #8, 31.25").
