Start to Listen

Together with our colleagues from Matrix we developed Start to Listen, an online toolbox to grow in listening. At the beginning of 2018, more than 100 users had already been registered.

In school 'listening' is seen as an important musical and social skill. But listening is more than just obeying .

By listening carefully, we discover new things, we focus our gaze, we refine our frame of mind. Yet listening often does not seem so easy. Start to Listen approaches listening as a free, unconditional, personal and intercultural way to perceive audibly . Because listening is a natural way of observing.

A toolbox full of sounds and inspiration

With Start to Listen we want to offer inspiration and tools to actively pay attention to the listening skills on a daily basis. The website www.starttolisten.org offers different audio fragments.

Start to Listen consists of 3 levels that last about 3 weeks each, in which teachers and their pupils start each day with a different fragment. And our range is growing: in addition to the playlist with Flemish music, there is now also a Walloon and a Turkish-inspired listening list.

The Walloon list was compiled by Le Forum des Compositeurs in collaboration with Centre Henri Pousseur, the Turkish by Barkin Engin and Burak Tamer from Reverie falls on all.

Reflect on listening

Sound art, new and experimental music and field recording are central: all sounds that the traditional media barely offer. They challenge you to listen in a different way. The accompanying listening questions encourage different forms of reflection: verbal, visual, performative and philosophical. They stimulate you to explore your own listening attitudes and those of others.

We developed Start to Listen tailored to primary education, but the material is freely available to everyone. The experience is central, not the knowledge about the artwork or its maker.

Start to Listen in times of distance learning

In times of distance learning, you can download a fragment every day and share them through an online meeting platform. Ask your students to listen carefully and challenge them to share their associations in a free text, drawing, photos or collage, dance or movement that they film ...

Afterwards, the students can take a look at how others have associated around the same fragment. One or more children can also write a reflection (similarities and differences).

At the end of the week (after 5 sessions) you can organize a quiz where someone makes an interpretation, for example by vocalizing a fragment, while the others have to guess which fragment it is about.

with the support of Cera

• to our projecten
• to our Wikifoon