For the first time ever in Ealing, a special festive Makaton singing and signing event with Christmas carols and seasonal tunes will be taking place.
Ealing Community Partners’ (ECP) Children’s Speech and Language team will be hosting the event at Ealing Broadway shopping centre on 15 December 2023 from 10.30am to 12noon. Among the tunes at the Makaton Christmas celebration set to bring seasonal joy to shoppers are Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jingle Bells, 12 Days Of Christmas and Silent Night.
Makaton is a communication tool that uses speech, signs and symbols and helps people communicate with others.
The festive event follows Ealing’s first ever Makaton Flash-mob organised by the same team in September to mark Speech and Language Therapy Awareness Month.
Hannah Howell-Day and Zoe Wilkinson from ECP’s Speech and Language team will be joined in Ealing Broadway shopping centre by community partners including Ealing Mencap, Dare2Dream and Ealing Council. Impact Theatre will also be performing a dance to White Christmas.
Hannah Howell-Day, clinical lead for Early Years Speech and Language Therapy told EALING.NEWS: “This is the first time we’ll be signing Christmas carols in a public place but we were inspired to do it after the Flash mob we did at the Centre in September proved popular. We are just trying to ride the momentum of that as we want to promote Makaton as much as possible.”
Ms Howell-Day added: “Makaton is an inclusive, unique language programme that uses symbols, signs and speech to enable people to communicate. It supports the development of essential communication skills such as attention and listening, comprehension, memory, recall and organisation of language
and expression. We will be performing 6 different carols and for those new to signing we would recommend starting with We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”
Zoe Wilkinson, senior speech and language therapist added: “No need to book, just turn up on the day as the more the merrier”
The team have also provided links to Makaton practice videos of all the songs which will be performed on the day.
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
For more information on Makaton and the event email: wlm-tr.sltuniversalservices@nhs.net