The Office

The PULSE team in South Africa attends and conducts different workshops and seminars throughout the year. The biggest project being Educational Band Visits together with Field Band Education (FBE). Through the Educational Band Visits the aim is to visit all the field bands around South Africa and to upskill the staff about the correlation between music and health, disability awareness, lifeskills and different Education content (see previously blog post here). In between these different seminars, workshops and band visits, the PULSE team is based at Field Band Foundation’s head office in Rivonia.

This round of PULSE (PULSE5) is the first year that all the north participants are based in Johannesburg for the whole year and working at the head office. Previously there have been teams based in different regions in South Africa, such as Kimberley in Northern Cape and Parys in Free State. With this year’s decision of having everyone based near the head office, the combination of the PULSE participants working and travelling together can vary from time to time. For PULSE5, this model is working very well in terms of communication, efficiency and planning. A result of working closely with the different departments within Field Band Foundation’s head office, PULSE5 feels integrated in the work environment and the organisation as a whole.

Some of the office work PULSE conducts consist of planning upcoming Educational Band Visits and other events. In addition to this, PULSE has a list of other things on the work agenda, such as: conducting follow-up work with the bands after the Educational Band Visits and communicate with Project Officers, contribute in developing surveys which are widely used within the foundation, develop roll-out plans, curriculum and other documents such as reports after completed events. Monthly lifeskills and HIV/Aids activities conducted in all the field bands are monitored by PULSE. In addition to these things, they are continuously improving the PULSE material and documents, and are making sure that they are up to date on the scheduled outcomes within the project. Also, FBF is currently developing a music and health strategy where PULSE naturally plays a big role due to their focus area in general.