What actually happens at Cocoon
A music and movement playspace in North Shields for one family at a time: babies and young children under three, and the grown-ups who love them.
Here's a little glimpse inside: a snapshot of one afternoon.
The phone and the song
M has been helping us test Cocoon for over three years, since he was 18 months old. He tested Cocoon 1, in the former Barclays bank, before we had any funding at all, and he's still testing Cocoon 2, where we are now, in a former beauty outlet shop. One afternoon at Cocoon 2, aged three, he brought a song from home. This is what happened next.
Read a description
Filmed by M's mam from the nursing chair. M moves around the edge of the room, singing beautifully down the head joint of the flute and climbing over a duvet, hot water bottles and the soft play. Kate follows just behind him, matching his notes on her flute, and his nana follows behind her, playing the ukulele. At the end, the grown-ups cheer: “Woo!” and his nana says: “Well done, musician.”
M's song
Read a description
M sings clearly: "Auntie Hannah's going on holiday." Then a flute joins in: Kate plays the same notes as his song, in different registers, higher and lower. A ukulele is strummed open, in an A minor chord.
In the room: M, leading at the front and singing; Kate Maines-Beasley, Cocoon Music CIC founder and musician; and M's nana. The two voices at the end are M and Kate.
How it started
In Megan's words
Megan is M's mam, and now Cocoon's co-director. Meet us
Read what Megan says
The “Auntie Hannah's Coming Home” or “Going on Holiday” song came from a day when we were at my mam and dad's house. He found his Auntie Hannah's electric guitar, which she keeps there, and brought it downstairs. He started strumming away and singing this song. When we next visited Cocoon, a couple of days after, I played the song with Kate, and that started what you see in the video.
Read a description
M, in a stripy top, stands in his grandparents' living room holding his Auntie Hannah's electric guitar. He strums away and sings: “Auntie Hannah's going home, going on holiday now, with her guitar.” At the end, the grown-ups cheer: “Woo!”
The afternoon in four moments
The phone
Hearing his own song, M chose the blue ukulele and asked for a second one, for his mam and his nana.
Kate
Read what Kate says
When Megan picked up her phone, I wasn't quite sure what she was doing. I was fighting the judgement in my head: ‘Oh no, what's she doing on her phone?’ Then, after a few seconds of what looked like scrolling, she turned around to show me this clip from home.
At this point, we were all sitting around because M was having a snack. I was like, ‘Whoa, look what just happened at snack time!’ She played this video of M composing and singing this song at home on his auntie's guitar. This inspired M to take this composition from home into the room.
Because I'd heard it first from the phone, I could replicate the notes and join in far more readily on my flute.
The band comes back
The music moved around the room: two ukuleles, then ukulele and flute, then voices alone. When Kate played the flute, she used the same notes as his song in the clip on the phone, so the room gave his own tune back to him. Every time they marched past the ball, he kicked it.
Almost a year earlier, the artist Rachel Faulkner sketched M leading a little band around the room: M with the blue ukulele, Kate on flute, and his mam at the back. This afternoon felt like a call back to that moment.
Listen to M's song from this afternoon (at the top of the page)
"Some of the most genuinely beautiful original music-making that has happened in the Cocoon space: entirely child-directed, musically rich, and emerging directly from M's own creative material brought from home."
Reflective practice
We document everything we do: notes, photos, voice notes, messages and reflective practice meetings. Thinking deeply about every session is built into how we work with families.
In Kate's words
Why the phone matters
When I first started developing Cocoon, I thought about asking families to lock their phones away for the session. I didn't. A phone is almost part of a grown-up's body, and I needed to understand what it was being used for.
That afternoon, the phone was used twice. First, to play us M's song from home, which started everything. Then to film the session from the nursing chair. From across the room, both looked just like scrolling. A lock box would have cost us both.
So test your assumptions, including the ones about parents' phones.
Read a description
Filmed by M's mam. M carries a full-size flute, which is a lot for a three-year-old to hold on his own, and dances as he sings tunefully down it. Kate plays the ukulele and sings “Auntie Hannah's going on holiday”, then “Auntie Hannah's going”, and then “woo-hoo-hoo” and some rolling “rrr” sounds, mirroring his noises on the same notes he's playing. His nana walks slowly along at the back, barefoot, strumming her ukulele. When M stops singing and lowers the flute, all the music stops with him. Then his nana says: “Yay!”
