The Ark has announced that they are inviting children right across Ireland to be part of a special online collection of 'love songs'.

One of the programmes which The Ark had to cancel, due to the current Covid-19 measures, was the BIG BANG Dublin! festival, a celebration of music for children. 

One element of that festival was a Love Song installation by Belgian composer Serge Verstock, where children ages 6+ were invited to record their own 'love songs' into 200 love shaped recording

devices. 

While that installation had to be cancelled, the team at The Ark love the idea of hearing from the children themselves what is most important to them and today put a call out to invite children to record audio messages at home onto an adult's phone and for the adult to upload them to The Ark, where they can be shared online. 

The first recordings will be made available on Sat 4th April at 11am at ark.ie but children are very welcome to send in their recordings over the next few weeks too.

How to take part: 

Go to ark.ie and click on The Ark @ Home and you will see a link to the Love Song page. 

There you will find a worksheet which gives you simple instructions of how to go about coming up with your own short Love Song.

Your Love Song can be about your favourite place, colour, pet, food, activity, person or it could simply be your favourite sound. If you play an instrument, you could record that as your Love Song. Try to keep your Love Song short – about 20 to 30 seconds audio is plenty.

When you are ready, ask a grown up to help record your Love Song as an audio file on their phone. Then, using the link you will find on the web page, you can send your audio recording to The Ark. It will then be added to the Love Song virtual installation on ark.ie.

Have fun listening to your own recording and discovering the Love Songs of lots of other children in Ireland in The Ark’s virtual installation, which will be available to listen to online at ark.ie from this Saturday, April 4 at 11am onwards.