For the past three years PULSE has been working on promoting the music and health aspect in the Norwegian Band Federation and the Field Band Foundation. This past september marked the beginning of a new PULSE project period, and we have a new set of goals to reach. New teams have started working on this in both Norway and in South Africa. In this post you will find short presentations by the two teams on the new project period of PULSE.

PULSE in South Africa:

PULSE in South Africa aims to promote the music and health aspect in The Field Band Foundation. During the last three years of PULSE a lot of content and curriculum has been developed and brought out to bands all over the country. The developed curriculum is gathered in different guides. These guides are about the music activity as a way of promoting health, as well as exploring attitudes in ourselves and to see how we can be a force of positive change in our society. The time has now come for us to implement and firmly ground this in the Field Band Foundation.

Up to this point the PULSE material has been shared at workshops fasilitated by the PULSE participants themselv. Now it is time to make this material sustainable within the organisation. We are sharing this process with the Field Band Education department, exchanging knowledge and ideas. One of our goals for the next years is to start training staff within the foundation to facilitate the material PULSE has developed.

We will continue working towards giving the staff of Field Band Foundation the tools and ability to give all members a sense of mastery, belonging and resilience. One of the biggest events the coming year is the National Workshop in february where we will be able to reach a big part of the tutors. Our goal is for the tutors to be able to take what they learn at this event back to their bands and implement PULSE material. We will also develop a health strategy for Field Band Foundation to enable further commitment to the health promotion within the foundation.

PULSE in Norway:

It is important to NMF that every child who wants to be in a band should have access to and feel welcomed to participate. We, as the South African participants, hope that by using our field band tools we will help the leadership to create a learning environment that make members of the bands feel belonging and well-being in the band.

We will be focusing on kids from linguistic minorities and children living in families with persistent low-income, this is also two groups that are currently under-represented in the Norwegian school bands. In order to change this we need to look at and share recruitment strategies with the bands. The task is two-folded; we need to find ways of attracting new members and at the same time develop strategies on how to retain the members that are already in the band.

At start of the program we will collaborate with two bands in Oslo and two in Bergen and each participant will have their own band to work with and attend rehearsals on a weekly basis with their band. Our focus will be on assisting the local management on how they can get to know their local community,  and through that their recruitment base, better and how they can create a learning environment that attracts and retain members.

 The second priority area is to improve NMFs institutional capacity to offer a sense of mastery, belonging and well-being. NMF is in the process of developing a low-threshold program that allows children from marginalized groups to participate in NMFs holiday programs. PULSE will participate in developing this initiative further and also to develop personnel that can run the programs in the future. We will also be working closely with the organizations Inclusion Agent program to develop and test various methodologies and strategies developed by the program. Lastly we will be sharing our experiences with NMFs mentor program, Bli bedre få det bedre (be better become better), so far we have started to share information about the Activity Library developed by PULSE for FBF and they all expressed interest to know more. Lastly we aim to develop a strategy build on the foundation of music and health promotion.

PULSE participants 2016 – 2017:

Masibulele Langa (SA)                                                                  Geir Anfinn Halland Johansen (NO)

Thulani Dupa (SA)                                                                         Emely Ruth Waet (NO)

Sihle Mabena (SA)                                                                         Ine Nord (NO)

Sizwe Nkosi (SA)                                                                             Solvor Vermeer (NO)

Written by PULSE