As producers of the Sidmouth Folk Festival 2023 Children’s Programme, we teamed up with Sidmouth C of E Primary School and Sidmouth Toy and Model Museum to bring you ‘Marvellous Toys’, a collection of new songs written by pupils and inspired by local people’s memories of their favourite toys from their childhood. 

You can also listen to the songs by visiting Sidmouth Folk Festival 4-11 August, 2023, where there will be a series of info panels on display across the town with information about the project and a QR code taking visitors to the songs.

Find out more about the festival here: https://sidmouthfolkfestival.co.uk/

More about this project

Funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund, Marvellous Toys saw over 120 children from Sidmouth C of E Primary School visit Sidmouth Toy and Model Museum. Following their visit, a selected group of children then conducted interviews with five volunteers from the museum, asking them about a particularly special toy from their childhood, and why it was still important to them to do this day. The interviews were conducted with the support of Marilyn Tucker of Wren Music, and recorded at Sidmouth Primary School.

Singwriter David Gibb then took an edited version of these interviews back into the school, and used them to run five song writing workshops, with each class writing a brand new song inspired by the memories of the Sidmouth Toy and Model Museum volunteers.

These songs have been recorded and form part of a special trail of infomation panels that will be available around Sidmouth during the Folk Festival in 2023. Each panel includes information on the chosen toy, some memories of the person interviewed, and a QR code to scan so that visitors to the town will be able to hear the new song written by the children of Sidmouth Primary School.