The inclusion of mindfulness as part of the daily curriculum for students has been demonstrated to be extremely effective in supporting a students’ learning. DkIT have been involved with the Erasmus+ funded Arts Mindfulness in Education (AMiE) project with a number of European educational and industry partners from Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and Portugal. The aim of this initiative was to provide European teachers with inspirational and supportive tools to be utilised in classrooms.

At the training event, one of the DkIT members of the AMiE project team, Jemma McGourty, introduced the project, speaking about the relevance of mindfulness to the Early Years Curriculum. She also presented on each of the intellectual outputs and classroom supports developed as part of the project including a website https://calminder.eu, video lessons, a book on mindfulness activities for children, music to be used for mindfulness activities and a free online training programme. The ‘Calminder’ website is an innovative and interactive web-based application that serves as an inspirational tool for teachers in pre-primary and primary education for introducing mindfulness through arts in their daily educational contexts in the form of a weekly calendar containing free exercises. Students from the Department of Nursing, Midwifery and Early Years and the Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music who were involved in the AMiE project spoke about their experiences. PhD student Leesa Flanagan who is completing a project on mindfulness in the early years supported by the Technological Universities Transformation Fund, was a guest speaker. She gave an overview of mindfulness and included some short exercises for the participants.

Speaking about the event, Dr Myles Hackett, Head of Department of Nursing, Midwifery & Early Years at DkIT, noted:

‘We were delighted to host a half-day training event in the Department of Nursing, Midwifery and Early Years to share the AMiE project.  Student educators and professionals working in education joined us to explore using arts and mindfulness in their work. The day concluded with an immersive mindfulness experience which was received with great enthusiasm.’

 Head of Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music, Dr Adèle Commins noted

‘we were delighted to work with our colleagues on the Early Years Programme at DkIT to share the outcomes of the AMiE project with early years educators and practitioners. We are proud of all of the outputs created by our colleagues and students to support educators. Throughout the project we witnessed the significant benefits to the inclusion of arts and mindfulness in the curriculum. We look forward to developing our ideas in this area and working together on future projects.’

For further information on the outputs from the AMiE project see Calminder

https://calminder.eu/about