Music and Talent: An experimental project for personal development and well-being through music

“Music and Talent” is an educational project for children between 3 and 9 years old. The aim of the project is to use music and musical intelligence as resources for enhancing important skills in social and cognitive development. These skills are self-esteem, self-confidence, motivation, social and emotional relationships, and well-being. The first part of the article describes the project’s foundation, organization and developed activities. The second part of the article presents the results of two exploratory studies that have been carried out to evaluate some of the developed activities. Study 1 measured the impact of an active music language learning methodology on the “originality” dimension of creativity. A quasi-experimental design was adopted, with experimental and control groups tested pre and post the musical intervention. Findings show a statistically significant increase in the originality dimension in the experimental group. Study 2 measured the children’s self-efficacy in relation to their participation in the Music and Talent project, with positive results. An exploratory study was adopted as the research design, using a validated 10 steps Likert questionnaire with 15 items.