Kids Kabin Middlesbrough is fortunate to have been part of the Musinc Project in its local area since summer 2020.
This is a project with Youth Focus North East and Tees Valley Music, and its focus was on social action and music making.
For the social action element, the children had a brainstorming session to pick what they wanted to do. They chose blessing boxes to be given out to the homeless in an initiative they named 'Be kind at Christmas'. These boxes include small wrapped items of warm clothing, toiletries and a selection box. The children also wrote a personal message to put in each box, with notes including ‘stay safe’ and ‘be kind’.
Many thanks to JD Sport for donating bags to hold all the gifts and keep them dry. The blessing boxes were passed on to Neighbourhood Welfare Middlesbrough, which is near Kids Kabin Middlesbrough and works closely with the local homeless community.
One of the children who chose the project said: “We haven’t got nowt but they've got even less and we should be nice to them.”
As part of the project the children also had the opportunity to learn how to play the xylophone. Due to social distancing the children were not able to do a live performance but they managed to put together a video of them playing ‘Jingle Bells’.
The children were involved in the mixing of the different parts of the song, including putting the backing track and melody together. This is featured in our Kids Kabin video called ‘The Making’, which shows our Newcastle team making up winter wellbeing packs for more than 100 children in the city.
It’s a lovely recording and we hope you enjoy listening to it. We wish all our families a wonderful holiday season and look forward to seeing all of you back in the new year.
