Big Emotions — big success! Music and wellbeing performance at MAST

On Friday 1 July 2022, school children from across Southampton were delighted by performance musician, as well as music and wellbeing educator, Laura Loft. Invited by Southampton Music Hub, Laura and her team performed a live interactive concert version of her fantastic resource Big Emotions at MAST Mayflower Studios.

Big Emotions is a beautiful story book written by Laura which features songs which support children and young people to process and recognise their emotions. Laura has also created a fantastic scheme of work to go with this which covers the national curriculum for music and is suitable for children in Year R, Year 1 and Year 2. Southampton and Isle of Wight Music Hub were so impressed with this resource that we bought this in for our schools (along with some CPD from Laura) to use at the beginning of the academic year with a particular emphasis on health and wellbeing being such an important part of the recovery curriculum post Covid.  

The hub has followed up schools’ huge take up of this with the opportunity to come and hear some of the songs performed live with wonderful interactive musical activities sprinkled throughout lead by Laura other musicians. Five schools and around 150 attended the theatre to sing, enjoy and take part in a brilliant workshop performance which focused on; Excitement, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Happiness. The children left with a soothing feather in their hands to help them feel the emotion ‘calm’.

Nia Collins, Programmes and Events Manager for Southampton Music Hub, says:

“Laura is such a brilliant educator and believes so fervently that music and wellbeing are intrinsically linked that she is able to put this across so clearly in the amazing work that she does with children in this area.  We have recently been successful in bidding for some additional money from Music Mark to continue this important work with Laura through partnership.  Next term we will have a new resource for Years 2, 3 & 4 called Big Dreams which will focus on growth mindset through creative musical activities”