At the Little Piano School, children aged 2 to 6 discover the piano through play. They experiment in small groups, making sounds, singing and playing simple games; they move to music, and are introduced to the basics of piano playing.
The activities promoted by the Ruhr Piano Festival in the area of music education in early childhood show impressive evidence that playful encounters with music offer a breadth of learning and development opportunities as well as a lot of fun. The founder of this innovative method, Little Piano School, is the Italian piano teacher Kim Monika Wright, brought to the Ruhr region by Professor Franz Xaver Ohnesorg in 2006. In collaboration with the Folkwang Musikschule and the Folkwang Universität der Künste, this open-ended experiment grew into a prize-winning project that was nominated “Ausgewählter Ort 2010” (Selected Landmark 2010) in the German federal innovation initiative “Deutschland – Land der Ideen” (Germany – Land of Ideas).
Supervised by advanced students and graduates of the Folkwang Universität der Künste, children aged two to six years discover the piano as a fascinating musical instrument and develop important personal and social skills.
10 years Little Piano School: Lang Lang as guest in Essen | © 2016
„Let yourself be guided by the child!“ – is the motto of the Little Piano School and its founder Kim Monika Wright. For over 25 years the Italian piano teacher from America has been introducing small children to music and piano playing in a most engaging and imaginative way.
The Folkwang Music School in Essen is the workshop of the Little Piano School in the Ruhr Area. Since the autumn of 2006 children aged two to six years have been coming here twice a week for classes.
In collaboration with the parish of Gladbeck-Bottrop-Dorsten, the Ruhr Piano Festival extended the 2009 pilot project to kindergartens. Before the Corona restrictions, around 200 children attended these classes at 16 Protestant kindergartens.
Students and graduates from the Folkwang Academy and other qualified applicants undergo further training to become Little Piano School teachers and are supervised and supported in their teaching activities by a team of experts.
Together, the Little Piano School and KlavierGarten (Piano-Garten) form a joint project of the Ruhr Piano Festival with the Folkwang Music School, the Folkwang University of the Arts and the Protestant Parish of Gladbeck-Bottrop-Dorsten.
The Little Piano School has been awarded the “Deutschland Land der Ideen” prize.
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