Karen Mackenzie, director of Musical Terms has been specialising in music with Early Years and Primary school children for over 25 years. Originally trained as a primary teacher, but with a musical background in piano and choral singing, she created the Open Air Nursery School in 1982 which specialised in musical experiences throughout learning.

In 1987 she began working with children who were excluded from mainstream classes and found that making music increased confidence, self-esteem, social skills, concentration and enjoyment in her pupils. Her deepening interest in music and child development led her to train as a Colourstrings teacher in 1994 and she has been teaching musicianship classes, using the Colourstrings approach, with children as young as newborn babies and up to 7-8 years old ever since. From 1996 to the present she has been the International tutor for Colourstrings, running teacher training programmes around the country, in Scotland and for students from all over the world.

From 1994-2006 Karen was the Early Years Music Specialist for Kent Music where she developed Colourstrings music classes throughout the county, managing a team of over 20 Colourstrings teachers. She directed a choir based on Kodály principles and she also designed and led several series of Music-making workshops and INSET training sessions for primary school teachers; presented talks on Group teaching for the Royal College of Music and on Memory and the Human Brain for Music Service INSET days.

Karen has been involved in numerous Youth Music First Steps projects since 2000 both as Music Leader and as Evaluator and is very experienced in developing all aspects of music in the community and within families.

She has a Master’s Degree in Psychology of Music from the University of Sheffield and has pursued her research interests with the Canterbury Christchurch University and the Sidney de Haan research Centre in Folkestone. She has presented papers on a variety of subjects, most recently at the ISME conference in Taipei in July 2006.

Karen also visits a village in The Gambia three times a year to teach and train teachers as part of her role as founder and Trustee of the charity GamBLE.