Brigid Finucane
Quick Look: Questing mixed-media artist, musician, early childhood music educator, gardener, writer, haiku-ist. Member of SCBWI and 12x12, in love with music, dance, picture books and poetry. Life has a habit of going sideways. Pre-Internets, I started out as a mixed media artist and educator teaching cross cultural paper arts and exhibiting my "goddess" sculptures widely. Hardly any of this information can be found online, so it's like it didn't exist ~ but here and there I find an exhibition announcement or catalog, and our house is still filled with artwork from friends and reflecting various stages of my development. In 1993, our family welcomed Briana into the world, and life changed forever! I went back to school for early childhood music training and found a second heart-path. Growing up, I was surrounded by the joyful experience” of music and community singing, and I relished the opportunity to share this joy with my students, and as time progressed, mentor other early childhood teachers. It is an honor to help those I teach become confident and creative musical beings. I embrace a holistic, child-centered approach, where musical exploration combines with a child’s development, and celebrates the diversity of human expression. I started as an itinerant teacher but eventually had the good luck of landing at Merit School of Music in Chicago, which has a singular goal of making music available to underserved populations. The school's philosophy aligned with my social justice values, and I taught ~ and learned from ~ sites I was placed at. CASL, the Chinese American Service League, was especially influential, and propelled me on a fascinating journey teaching English through music that still resonates deeply. Eventually I was designated faculty mentor at Merit, and before retiring, served as Faculty Chair for the Early Childhood and General Music Departments. The Children's Music Network, an international association of musicians celebrating all came into my life in the early years of the millennium, aMs. Finucane is active in the Children’s Music Network and is a former editor of its online journal, Pass it On! A regular conference presenter on early childhood music, Ms. Finucane has presented workshops on music and literary, cross-cultural singing games and dances, iPads in the musical classroom, and other topics for the Erikson Institute, Chicago City Colleges, NAEYC and CMAEYC, among others. She publishes articles and lesson plans, and contributed for several years to a blog for the early childhood music community, Pre-K and K Sharing. Ms. Finucane holds a Bachelor of Arts in art from the University of Minnesota, and a Master in Fine Arts in textiles from JFK University in Berkeley, California. She has participated in numerous music education certification programs that include Orff and Kodaly Level I, Dalcroze, and Smithsonian Folkways Certification in World Music Pedagogy. An enduring love for picture books has propelled her to start on a path to write books and poems for children and the adults who love them. Odd acronyms ~ e.g., SCBWI, 12x12 ~ are becoming old friends. Life wouldn't be complete without gardens, ukuleles, friends and and a funny, supportive family including a small apricot cat named Annie and an old fluffer dog named Chico.
