Next Friday, April 12, the gentle sound of sweet voices singing lullabies will be heard in Spalding... that is if the parents and toddlers manage to stay awake!
As most of us know, lullabies are intended to soothe a small child, so there is every possibility that Rock-a-bye baby or Hush, Little Baby might just send everyone at Acorn Childcare into the land of nod.
Chances are though that the 30 or so youngsters and their parents who attend the session will be kept wide awake because what they will be hearing are long-forgotten lullabies unearthed by inspirational folk musician Jackie Oates, who is leading the workshop.
Jackie, who has toured the UK exploring what she calls “a huge resource of traditional lullabies” that have faded out of popular usage, says she has puppets and other props that she will use while teaching the songs.
Kathy Holmes, principal at Acorn Childcare, is delighted that Jackie chose her childcare facility for the workshop, although Kathy already had good reason to feel happy: she is celebrating Acorn Childcare achieving an ‘outstanding’ rating in its Ofsted inspection, the first full day care setting to do so.
“We are having a huge party the day before to celebrate,” says Kathy. “We are very proud.”
Kathy is a classically trained musician and former music teacher and so music is a specialism at Acorn Childcare. Kathy says: “We find it is very therapeutic and it is a good way of bonding with the children.”
Sadly, the workshop is restricted to children who attend Acorn Childcare, although everyone will get the chance to hear the award-winning musician later in the day when Jackie performs a concert in South Holland Centre at 8pm. Spalding is privileged to be on Jackie’s tour of her special project focused around lullabies – in fact, the event on Friday will be the tour’s opening concert.
South Holland Centre manager Sally Harrison said: “This event has had quite a lot of attention from Radio 2 and other national media, so we are rather chuffed that we have the first date of the tour here in Spalding.”
In her repertoire, Jackie will be singing some of the songs that she has found “buried in collections” or existing only in a few people’s memories.
She says: “I love coming to Lincolnshire because it has a really brilliant folk heritage.”