If you follow our blog regularly, you might have read our previous post about Educational Band Visits.

An Educational Band Visit is where PULSE and Field Band Education travel to various bands out in the regions offering training and up-skilling in various topics such as conducting, teaching skills, practical music theory and disability awareness.

To ensure the sustainability and longevity of the PULSE project, it is crucial that the knowledge shared with the tutors during the Educational Band Visit is also implemented in the rehearsals with the members. PULSE is always striving for the benefits of the up-skilling to reach member level, and is therefor consistently focusing on closing the gap between the field band tutors having the knowledge and implementing the knowledge. The field band tutors are already doing a great job as role models promoting a positive change in their communities and in their bands, and to support them in taking this to the next level PULSE has introduced the “Change Agent Action Plan”.

The Change Agent Action Plan is exactly what it sounds like – an action plan that the tutors make as a team on how they are going to implement the new knowledge that they have gained during the Educational Band Visit. During every PULSE session, we write down some key points from the session on a flip chart paper, which we later hang up on the wall. By the end of day three we have a wall full of information from the sessions; explanation of different types of disabilities, how to better accommodate members living with a disability, tips for inclusive teaching and improved communication, strategies for inclusion and the list goes on. We then use all this information on the wall as a resource for the tutor teams, where they each have to pick one thing they think is especially important to implement, and discuss this with the rest of the team. Each team then agrees on what topics they want to focus on going back to the band, which improvements they will make and commit to this plan by signing it and hanging it up in the Field Band Truck or somewhere else visible in the rehearsal space. The plan needs to be realistic and specific since they are reporting back to PULSE the four following weeks on how they are doing on their implementation.

As the Educational Band Visits continue, PULSE looks forward to hearing more about how all the different Change Agent Action Plans are being rolled out!

Written by Solvor Vermeer, pictures by Emely Ruth Waet.