Themes
- Culture
- Intercultural cooperation
- Teambuilding
- Art
Objective
- This workshop challenges participants to think about music, how music originated, and how music can be used for team work regardless of backgrounds. Participants will do couple of small exercises and then create their own piece of music as a result.
- To consider how music is an elemental part of every society and every culture in the world
- To dismantle the expectation that music has to be a professional skill with professional tools
- To strengthen teambuilding and international cooperation
- To find creative ways to promote practices that strengthen culture sharing, international cooperation, and work in the arts
Duration
- Method is implemented for 180 minutes in two times.
Materials
- Paper, Pen and Chairs ( Usual materials in seminar room )
Recommended Method
Preparation
Facilitator needs to learn couple of rhythms so to lead some exercises.
Implementation Phase
1.Explain that the aim of the workshop is to create music piece to promote practices to strengthen team building and international collaboration.
2.Talk shortly how music is one of the intrinsic in every culture on the planet, that it may have predated language, and how it connects people.
3.Do a short exhibition “Pentatonic scale by Bobby McFerrin”: without any other instructions, facilitator comes to a stage area in front of all participants. Facilitator jumps and voices a note, and instruct participants to repeat the note. Jump and note. After participants start joining, jump on a left with a lower note. Repeat. Then jump to back and forth between two notes. After participants have followed this, start making a little song. Left is for lower notes, right is for higher notes. After a successful song, make a reflection that every culture instinctively understand this note scale and singing together.
4.Do a short exercise “World of sounds” Participants are in a circle with their eyes closed. The facilitator describes a situation (under the sea, the open space, the top of a mountain, a traffic jam, etc.) and the participants have to create the sounds of that place. After 3 successful rounds, give a short Reflection: Were you really inside of that place? What was more pleasant/easy to create, and why? Do you consider other participants and their sounds during this exercise?
5.Follow with a more difficult short exercise “Body percussion”: 1 participant starts to make some rhythm either using his/her body or any object that he/she may find. Each participant joins with a new sound/rhythm that would fit a previous one. The group continues until the sound maintains. Do 3 rounds with a volunteer rhythm start. Do a Reflection: How did exercises go? What was challenging? What they enjoyed/didn’t enjoy.
6.Do a main activity “The human orchestra”: split people into groups of 6 participants. They have a task to make an orchestra, where one of them is a director; the rest are different instruments with real sound. They create the instrument with their look, physical appearance, and they decide the sound this instrument produces. Once they have chosen the director and all of the instruments, they need to make up a short song, that will be performed as a concert (the director shows who is starting, stopping, the rhythm, the volume, and all possibilities of the orchestra). The group has 15min to create a song and practice. All groups will present their human orchestra and song.
Debriefing and evaluation
Ask participants to explain the process of collaboration and how they created their music:
- Did this change their perspective on music and music collaboration?
- How did they feel during their practices and performance?
- Were there any problems during these activities? Miscommunication? Understanding?
- Would they want to create more music based on these activities?
- Did they find they knew more or less about the subject than they originally thought they did?
Suggestions for follow up
If participants feel comfortable with this activity and can work together, the workshop can end in an invitation to create a song for the workshop, a song that all can follow. Participants can use body percussion or human orchestra for the main song.
