Time to Talk: Overview
Project title:
Time to Talk
Project Location:
Sandwell
Date of Project:
February 2007 - March 2009
Project Participants:
Early Years Settings across Sandwell including schools, private nurseries, play groups and children’s centres.
Project Funders:
SMBC
Neighbourhood Renewal Fund
Working Neighbourhoods Fund
Project Overview:
Time to Talk is a Sandwell wide programme to support the speech and language development of children aged 0-5 years. The aim of the programme was to mirror national proportions in Foundation Stage in terms of speaking, listening and mathematical development as well as personal, social and emotional development. In the first stage of the programme, all three year olds were assessed using a speech and language assessment tool and this provided the baseline for the programme’s impact. In order to achieve these improvements, a key element of change would be to increase the confidence of children, parents/carers and early practitioners in communicating.
Multistory designed and developed the creative arts strand of this programme consisting of 8 different creative elements in the first year of the programme and 6 different elements in year two. The arts strand focused on the development of children aged 3-5 years using innovative multisensory and creative approaches and on developing the creative skills of early years practitioners.
The creative arts strand encompassed several art forms including movement/dance, spoken word/nursery rhyming, puppets, sound making and creative play. The activities embraced the ethos that using creativity can support and enhance a child’s learning experience. They allowed for a more abstract way of learning alongside more formal methods within the traditional classroom setting.
In total, between February 07 and March 09, we delivered creative activities in 138 settings with 4055 children (and 717 parents/carers who were able to attend the sessions) as well as creative professional development training to 350 practitioners. The success of the programme in year one resulted in the continuation of funding for the second year. In year two, we reduced the menu of activities to those that provided the greatest impact across year one to an increased number of settings and we created free resources for schools and nurseries.
The programme was delivered alongside other borough wide Time to Talk activities developed by other external agencies all aiming to address some of the requirements of the Government’s ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda.
You can download the Time to Talk Evaluation Guide by clicking on the link below.
Time to Talk Evaluation (PDF) 8.6MB
For more information about the different creative programme activities click on the project links below.
