New School Resource Uses Original Songs to Help Children Talk About Difficult Feelings

A new emotional literacy resource combining original music, illustration and guided discussion is being introduced to primary schools across the UK from the next academic year.

TroubleChutes was created by singer-songwriter and psychologically informed creative practitioner Marsha Swanson, who has spent more than two decades working with children and young people across educational, charitable and specialist therapeutic settings. She holds a First-Class Honours degree in Psychology. Her early work at Kids Company included lyric workshops alongside music, recording, movement and performance, while later work with children unable to access mainstream education was supported by five years of weekly supervision from child psychotherapist Dr Anne Alvarez of the Tavistock Clinic.

TroubleChutes grew out of Swanson’s long-standing use of music to open up conversations with children about difficult feelings and experiences. Wanting to make that approach available to others, she began developing it into a full resource, with the pandemic later giving her the opportunity to bring together collaborators, record the songs and complete the project. The finished resource comprises 15 professionally recorded songs, designed primarily for children in Years 3 to 6, covering subjects including jealousy, bullying, grief, divorce, sibling rivalry, exclusion and anxiety, each paired with illustration and discussion prompts.

Rather than asking children to talk about their own experiences, TroubleChutes uses the songs and their characters as a starting point for conversation, with listening, drawing, movement and performance offering different ways to take part. It is designed as a universal resource, based on the principle that emotional literacy is relevant to all children rather than only those who have reached a threshold for therapeutic or clinical support.

Swanson said: “Children don’t always have the language to explain what is happening for them emotionally, but they can often recognise something in a song first. That little bit of distance can make difficult subjects easier to think about and talk about. Rather than telling them what they should feel, TroubleChutes aims to give children the space to understand what they feel and to hear how others in their peer group may experience the same situation completely differently.”

The launch comes as new research from the National Literacy Trust found that while 81.4% of 8 to 18-year-olds believe they are good at listening to others and understanding their point of view, fewer than half (44.8%) feel they are good at expressing their own feelings.

TroubleChutes has been developed through Swanson’s work with children across a range of school settings. Material was incorporated into a nurture programme at Oasis Academy South Bank Primary in Waterloo, where a Year 3 teacher reported that participating pupils appeared “more confident and motivated in class and outside in the playground.” More recently, St Mary’s Hampton CE Primary School became a TroubleChutes Ambassador School, helping to refine the final stages of the resource and taking part in a filmed pilot now being presented to broadcasters.

The resource was developed and published in partnership with specialist mental-health publisher Karnac Books and is designed for use across whole-class, small-group and one-to-one settings, as well as alongside PSHE, music and literacy. More information is available at troublechutes.co.uk.