Hello
My name is Melanie Cossins
"Singing saved me. It picked me up from a deep dark hole. It has the power to lift your mood and bring people together."
About Me.
I have been teaching music for over 20 years and a trained Kodaly early years practitioner. As a child I spent many years dancing but also played clarinet and saxophone and was a member of the Wakefield Youth Choir. I love singing and being creative however as a teenager my school music teacher made me feel I was not musical enough to carry on and so I left music and singing behind to pursue studying media and broadcasting.
​
In my early 20s I suffered from depression, I don't think I ever really recovered and in my mid 20s had what I can only describe as a breakdown. It was at this time I quit my job and purley by accident found singing again. This was the start of a new journey for me and in 2001 I began to teach singing to children at a theatre school in Dorset which I absolutely loved. In 2003, after being diagnosed with Crohns disease, I left my day job and moved back to Wakefield where she set up Music for Minors running early years music classes. My classes were extremely popular and I really loved every minute of seeing how young children responded to music so I expanded tuition to include primary and secondary age children; private vocal tuition, ukulele and recorder tuition and community singing for adults. I felt a name change was needed because of how I had grown as a practitioner and teacher, and Cossins Music School was born.
​
Over the years I have studied with the British Kodaly Academy obtaining a Certificate of Professional Practice in Early Childhood Music with Roehampton University and in 2017 I had a profound experience visiting Budapest (the home of Zoltan Kodaly) on a study tour. After visiting the city's music schools and early years settings where music is embedded into Hungarian culture, it deeply affected me and I realised I didn't like how we educate children in school in the UK. This was an experience I have never forgotten and convinced me how important singing is and how it affects on our health and wellbeing.
Melanie Cossins - musician, consultant, artist, creative, author, community arts leader and educator.
Trip to Budapest - home of Zoltan Kodaly
After securing funding from Wakefield Council I worked on a variety of community projects around Wakefield. One of these projects involved working with a local care home and nursery providing the first intergenerational music sessions in the area. Another project involve creating a vegetable orchestra with children in Rycroft which proved really popular and during COVID I was asked by a Guiding group to run my first ever online demostration of making vegetable instruments.
​
In 2018, with my colleague Frances Turnbull (Musicaliti), we set up Think Cre8tive Group CIC with the intention of using music (especially singing) as a clinical health intervention. I have developed and lead community projects Sing It Out! Together (community singing for wellbeing), Sing It Out! Mama (for mums and babies to help prevent PND) and Sing It Out! Everyone Aloud (intergenerational music sessions). These projects lead to the creation of songbooks and audio tracks for everyone to access via download and streaming.
​
During the coronavirus outbreak I lost a lot of my face to face work and so started producing online sessions for people to access including The Daily Smile , Sing It Out! Mama, Sing It Out! Choirs. I was able to do this for a while until depression hit me again and I could not bring myself to sing. As a carer of two home educated neurodivergent children the pandemic hit us all hard however somehow through all this my daughter and I started a Minecraft server to bring children together at a time when the world was the most unsettled. Our server has grown over the last two years and has become really popular, helping children make new friends, give them confidence, raise their self-esteem and give them a creative outlet to follow their passions.
​
I was honoured to be invited to present Minecraft: Connection through creativity during the pandemic and beyond at the Creativity Conference at Brighton University in June this year as well as recieve funding for the National Lottery to expand events and one to one sessions. Much of my time is now spent maintaining our amazing server and helping neurodivergent children thrive.
I still believe singing is hugely important for our wellbeing and works well for anyone who struggles with 'mindfullness'. Being creative is an innately human and must be at the heart of our lives.
FUN FACT!
I like to challenge myself and prove that maybe I am not as bad at things as I think. My generally knowledge is really poor - probably because I have trouble remembering things! I applied and appeared on National Lottery Jet Set - a general knowledge quiz game where you could win a dream holiday. I did pretty well and came second. Not enough to win the prize but I am really proud I got that far!