At Drumunity, our unwavering commitment is to enhance physical, mental, and social well-being through the art of collective music-making. Extensive research underscores the positive impact of group music-making on well-being, making it a potent tool for fostering connections, communication, collaboration, and creative self-expression among participants. We believe that music’s universal language, rooted in democracy, non-judgment, and pure enjoyment, can empower individuals to gain confidence, appreciate others, feel supported, and experience a profound sense of connectedness.
Over the past eleven years, we’ve proudly collaborated with diverse participant groups, spanning toddlers, seniors, individuals with physical and mental disabilities, mental health patients, schoolchildren, and able-bodied adults, both within the public and private sectors.
Aims:
- Enhance Physical and Coordination Abilities: Through a variety of physical and rhythmic exercises encompassing body percussion, breathing techniques, vocal exercises, and hands-on drumming experience, we aim to improve participants’ physical and coordination skills.
- Develop Communication Skills: Our workshops prioritize the development of essential social skills such as turn-taking, eye contact, imitation, vocalization, and initiation. Various engaging games and exercises, including call-and-response turns and improvisational solos, are designed to nurture these skills.
- Cultivate Musical Spontaneity and Improvisation: We emphasize empowering our participants to become proficient improvisers, offering ample opportunities to practice this skill in diverse settings.
- Exercise Teamwork and Leadership Skills: Collaborative teamwork and effective leadership abilities are paramount. We provide a safe space for participants to hone these skills through engaging games and activities designed for this purpose.
Objectives:
Our proposal outlines a series of 12 weekly workshops, accommodating up to 12 participants, led by one or two skilled facilitators. Each session will run for approximately 60 to 70 minutes. The content of these sessions will evolve progressively, with increasing depth and complexity as participants grow in proficiency.
Session Breakdown:
- Ice Breakers: These initial activities consist of rhythm-based games and exercises to establish a sense of connection among participants.
- Group Concentration Exercises: These tasks demand participants’ conscious presence and teamwork. Games like “passing the beat” and “call & response” sharpen focus and cooperation.
- Rhythm Exercises: Basic West African rhythms are introduced, encouraging participants to play West African drums such as djembe and dunduns. The goal is to enhance rhythmic abilities and boost performing confidence.
- Social Rhythmic Games: Activities in this segment promote socialization, connection, and coordination among group members. For example, each participant selects two or three others to collaborate on a musical piece.
- Taking the Lead: A dynamic and creative activity requiring participants to orchestrate the group, fostering leadership skills, confidence, effective communication, active listening, appreciation for others, and a heightened sense of connectedness.
- Composition Challenge: In later stages, sub-groups are formed to create and perform original pieces, emphasizing creativity, teamwork, effective communication, and an appreciation for individual strengths and contributions.
- Group Jam: An opportunity for the entire group to play together, promoting creativity, active listening, and seamless collaboration.
- Group Reflection: A closing segment for participants to reflect on their experience and exchange feedback, enhancing self-awareness and collective growth.
Our comprehensive proposal aims to harness the transformative power of music to improve well-being, foster connections, and empower individuals through engaging, skill-building workshops
DRUMUNITY CIC is devoted to improving physical, mental and social well-being through collective music-making. Group music-making has been shown to have a positive impact on well-being and is an effective tool for groups of participants to connect, communicate, collaborate and express themselves creatively. In our work, we use the democratic, non-judgemental and fun language of music to help individuals to gain confidence, appreciate others, feel supported and experience a greater sense connectedness.
Since 2008 we have worked with a wide range of participants; toddlers, the elderly, people with physical/mental disabilities, mental health patients, school children and able-bodied adults within both the public and the private sectors.