Sarah Brooke has taught in preschools, primary schools, secondary schools, tertiary institutions and professional development courses to a range of people - babies, children, adults, community workers, music teachers, classroom teachers and prisoners.  She is a creative music and movement educator who adapts the principles and understandings of the Orff Schulwerk Approach to her teaching of all creative arts areas.  She is passionate about the value of the arts in holistic education and enjoys working with classroom teachers to help develop their skills in incorporating the arts within their programs.  She places 'play' high on her list of educational pursuits and her Master's thesis looked at the value of using playground games within an Orff Schulwerk music and movement program.  Sarah has conducted many workshops and training courses in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, U.S.A., Hong Kong, Singapore and China.

Melissa Dods lectures part time in music education at Melbourne University. She was a music specialist for thirteen years at Melbourne Grammar Junior School – Grimwade House and is currently teaching music part time at St Catherine's in Melbourne. Melissa is an experienced workshop leader with extensive background in the Kodaly and Orff approaches, having presented at State and National music conferences in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and the ACT.  Her main area of expertise is with vocal skills, and for the last ten years she has lectured in this area as part of the National Accredited Orff Music Level Training Courses. 

Melissa has been a long-term member of the Victorian Kodaly and Orff music committees and has served on both in executive positions. She is currently the President of the Victorian Orff Shulwerk Music Association and the Orff Levels Training Coordinator for Victoria.

Melissa is very committed to promoting singing in school music programs and in young children’s choirs. She has worked with both school and community choirs in Melbourne.

Jon Madin has combined making instruments, composing pieces, playing music and teaching since 1990 when Andy Rigby introduced him to marimbas, and they adapted the Africa style to be made in Australia. His design for marimbas has been used to build thousands of instruments for schools and community groups around the world, and his music compositions and arrangements have inspired music-making by people of all ages and musical experience. His school workshop days are likely to end with a hall-full of children, parents and teachers playing a vast assortment of instruments, singing and dancing anything from the Pachelbel Canon to "We Will Rock You". Jon continues to make and invent instruments: his Dingbeaters, Echocellos, Floatwackers, Piano glocks and Shaker rings have become well-known at many festivals and school workshops. More recent inventions are the Musical Bike and the Streamer Cymbal. He has composed and adapted hundreds of pieces for playing by large groups of often-inexperienced musicians for performance within minutes, by finding simple patterns. With this approach, Jon regularly enjoys music-making in ensembles of three - or three hundred! He is in international demand now as a workshop leader and his four books of marimba-based music and two books showing how to make marimbas and many 'wacky instruments' have boosted school music programmes and community music-making around the world. Many of his pieces are ideally suited to classroom instruments, and all marimba pieces can be played on xylophones.

Website: www.marimbamusic.com.au

This session will explore elements of movement and music.  Participants will develop movement skills and explore, experiment and improvise with these, creating a choreographed work which will involve paired, small and whole group composition.