You probably know the feeling of starting something you really don`t know how to get through? It can be writing a master thesis, giving birth to a baby or… designing a survey for the first time in your life. After the last couple of weeks I think they all seem quite similar though I am quite inexperienced regarding this with babies.

First, trying to wake up early in the morning, then, trying to enjoy your cup of coffee, then trying to look forward to the new workday in your office on the table just beside your kitchen. You might also know that for some amazing reason something happens during these days. You don`t realize it. You are in a tunnel. It`s quite dark, quite painful at some points. You can`t see the sky above you. What you see is more like this:

The time is 15:12 pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Lisa is walking across the room to the other table to grab an apple and maybe start thinking about what to exercise at the gym. Then it happen; she asks Randi: “So, what should we do next?”

“Hmm”… Randi is thinking. Finding a yellow post-it and writing down a “must do” list with pedagogic tick off boxes when achieved. When Lisa returns to the office table she finds this inspiring list pasted on her coffee cup.

Randi sees that her face gets confused, a little upset and then it breaks into a big laughter.

“Here we go!”

Now it`s Tuesday again and we have edited the questionnaires for the last time. A lovely feeling! Now we just can`t wait to collect the answers.

The lucky target groups that will have the pleasure of answering this survey are the leadership, the middle management and the tutors in our host organisation the Field Band Foundation. Well, not all of them, but the ones in “our region”, Gauteng. That means the ten wonderful people working on the head office and the four different staffs of project officers, band coordinators and tutors in the bands of Soweto, Cullinan, Springs and Alexandra.

The goal for the survey is to find the status quo for the understanding about how music is linked to health, in a theoretical, but even more important, in a practical manner. What does it mean to the typical Field Band member to meet the hundred other kids twice a week to improve their skills in dancing and playing music? What does it mean to work towards the annual national championships? What does it mean to meet tutors and adults that have “been in their shoes”?

Hopefully the results of the survey will make a good base for this status quo report and show us what measures should be done for reaching the PULSE goal; extending the target groups practical knowledge of how participating in musical activities can be health promoting. Some measures to achieve this goal can be conducting workshops about music and health, gender equality and social inclusion, develop teaching manuals, having lectures and so on. We are excited to see were the clues from the survey will lead us.

Follow our blog and you will be kept updated on this exiting journey….!

Written by Randi Margrethe Mathiasdatter Larsen