For Older Children

In our work with older children our focus is not only on opening a space where your child can discover and explore new interests or talk about things that they are thinking about, but also on helping your child learn to use tools that can become part of an ongoing aesthetic practice. 

This might mean learning how to play an instrument (from the piano and guitar to reed instruments, the trombone, recorders, and many other instruments), playing or improvising music together, singing, building simple instruments together, composing musicals, making stop-motion movies, or exploring waveforms and simple programming through different applications and synthesizers.

Some children we work with are having a hard time at home or in school. They might be disengaged, anxious, frustrated, or have difficult relationships with peers or teachers. Other children have creative interests that do not easily fit into music lessons or classes that are offered.

It can be hard, if not impossible, for children to understand the rules that they encounter in the different spaces they move through. One kind of behavior might be expected at home, or with certain teachers, while other kinds of behavior might be expected at friends' or relatives' houses, or with other teachers. At the same time, as children get older the implicit social codes become more complex and more difficult to navigate.  What a person is supposed to do with others, what a person is allowed to say to others, changes: a new social reality imposes itself.  A child has to find a way to manage all these situations.  And in all these rule governed spaces it is not clear what space a child will have for themself, where they can explore their own interests and experience. 

Rather than enforce the norms that your child is having a hard time navigating, or focusing on the demands that your child is responding or reacting to, we work to give your child a space and the necessary tools to explore experiences and interests that are difficult to explore at home or in school.  It is important for a child to discover that they have the capacity, through their specific interest and singular creativity, to build a life with others.