Babelut centralizes the relationship between babies /toddlers and music, dance, visual art and theatre. Babelut is a creative meeting place with performances, workshops and debates for all target groups.

Target groups Babelut
- Children of 0 to 3 years old
- Parents and grandparents
- Pregnant women
- Child care workers
- Students and teachers in the child care department
- Nursery school teachers
- Artists and pedagogues (in training)
- Art school tutors
- Scientists
- Promoters in cultural centres, art centres and festivals

Objectives Babelut
- Set up research and experiments to investigate the influence of music on 0- to 3-year-olds.
- Work out a cultural programme specifically intended for 0- to 3-year-olds.
- Create awareness among professionals working with 0- to 3-year-olds.

Music stimulates development
Several important pedagogues and musicians (e.g. Kodály, Suziki, Gordon) have pointed out the importance of music from birth onwards. International research indicates that music offers a wide scale of essential development areas. Playing music with babies and toddlers effects their cognitive, motorial, communicative, social and emotional development.

Babelut emphasizes the importance of music from birth onwards
Attention for music at a very early stage often lacks within the target groups. Especially during the training of child care workers, musicians, musical pedagogues and music therapists.

In child care training for example, teachers often have little musical knowledge. Child care workers and also parents are not conscious enough of sound and music. They only have commercial products with very little educational value at their disposal.

Music teachers, music pedagogues and music therapists know very little about the influence of music on babies and toddlers and are not aware of the importance of their musical development.

Babelut points out the importance of music for the very small to everyone concerned with 0- to 3-year-olds.

European Culture Programme 2007-2013

Two years ago, the traject Art for the little ones knew a succesful start with the international Babelut Festival in cooperation with Theater De Spiegel and Provinciaal Domein Dommelhof. Contact with organizations from Hungary (Kaboca Puppet Theatre), Portugal (Companhia de Musica Teatral en Sociedade Artistica Musical dos Pousos) and England (York Early Music Foundation) showed the need to develop a broader basis for support for the diffusion of music for the very young. Starting from a shared conviction, vision and intention the ambition arose of collaborating on a European project with live musical performance. Therefore, Musica prepared a project as part of the European Culture Programme 2007-2013. By the end of March 2010, Musica will receive a decisive answer whether or not this European project might take place.

Partners
Several Babelut projects are a collaboration between Musica, impulse centre for music, Theater De Spiegel and Provinciaal Domein Dommelhof.