Blog 1: Tríona Walsh, Opera Singer, TAP Artist and Music Educator

Tríona Walsh is an opera singer, collaborative artist and music educator. Her music education practice is rooted in the use of a child’s first instruments – the voice and the body- as a medium for expression, communication, play, and artistic exploration.

Making music together provides children with a plethora of musical and non-musical benefits including building coordination and motor skills, resilience, empathy, and communication skills through co-operative objectives.

Triona is a TAP trained artist and works regularly with Music Generation partnerships and Sing Ireland, leading group singing days and providing classroom-based projects in various primary, secondary and early years settings. Her philosophy is one of inclusivity, differentiation and accepting every offer as an artistic expression of the child. Having fun and making ‘mistakes’ are essential ingredients in her collaborative process.

In 2025, Tríona collaborated with composer Fiona Linnane and classroom teacher Nuala Dooly to deliver Little Woodland Heights, a programme of interactive music-making for children with students at Scoil Mhuire Eimhín in Co Limerick. Little Woodland Heights was one of three recipients of the 2025 Arts in Education Portal Documentation Award.

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In the first post of our new guest blog series, soprano Tríona Walsh shares how Little Woodland Heights began – an interactive music-making project with students at Scoil Mhuire Eimhín, Co Limerick.

Little Woodland Heights – Getting Started! 

Little Woodland Heights was developed in 2015 by composer Nick Roth with the support of the Arts Council of Ireland, The Ark, California Academy of Sciences and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Nick is a Dublin based Saxophonist and Composer whose works are rooted in philosophical ideas and developed through improvisational exploration. His vision for Little Woodland Heights is ‘learning music through trees, and forest through music’. In 2024 CoMA (Contemporary Music for All), funded by Diaphonique – The Franco-British-Irish fund for Contemporary Music, worked with Nick to facilitate training and delivery of the project in London, Yorkshire and Limerick.

CoMA approached composer, Fiona Linnane to engage her expertise in delivering the project in Ireland. Fiona founded CoMA Limerick in 2008, a collective of composers, rebranding in 2021 to become ‘Limerick New Music Ensemble’ (LNME). I joined LNME in 2021 as a vocalist and composer and had also worked with Fiona on a number of projects. Through our collaboration with the Cork ETB School of Music on ‘Cogarnach’, a Crawford Art Gallery, Building as Witness Project Award, we realised that we complimented each other in approach and philosophy and were a dream team for an Arts in Education residency! So we embarked on a few days of training and a lovely field trip to Curraghchase Forest Park with Nick Roth.

Fiona identified Nuala Dooly, a TAP trained teacher from Effin National School in Co Limerick, as an ideal collaborator on our first ‘Little Woodlands Heights’ adventure. Effin National School is situated in the beautiful Ballyhoura Region which stretches from Co Limerick and into North East Cork. Fiona had previously worked with Nuala’s 3rd & 4th Class group as part of a whole school BLAST residency and she knew that the children would be up for something unique and challenging.

We had our team! We had our plan! So we were ready.

The first part of our mission… to build relationships and to establish a safe and encouraging space for creative exploration.

Students and Creative Practitioners from Scoil Mhuire Eimhin during Little Woodland Heights. Image credit: Scoil Mhuire Eimhin and Éilís Murphy, Arts in Education Portal Documentation Award 2025

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