Easter 2020, not like any other Easter

Keeping the members active and engaged is an important strategy for NMF and it is agreed to be particularly important now with the ongoing corona regulations.

Due to corona restrictions, the Norwegian authorities decided that children had to stay home with their families over Easter. NMF wanted to respond to the changes by offering activities that could keep children and families busy during the holidays.

NMF had already experienced success with digital courses on Zoom for conductors and board members before Easter. This was a huge inspiration for the team to come up with an exciting and inspiring program for the children during the Easter holidays.

The idea was to develop a program that children could follow daily from their homes to educate and socialize through banding related activities. PULSE was challenged to participate in developing the program together with other NMF employees. The team responded to the call and came on board by suggesting and designing activities to the daily activity program and by contributing to conducting an amazing digital FeriePULSE. The first one ever in NMFs history.

The digital PåskePULSE program consisted of one session per day facilitated by Thulani Maluleka and Madeleine Klouda for five days on Zoom. Each session lasted for 45 minutes and was repeated three times for three different groups. Thulani and Madeleine executed fun-filled activities which included Body percussion, NO.1-3 break clap, Waka-Waka dance, and a song called Ziyawa which includes both playing on an instrument and singing. Here you can see an example where Thulani is presenting the body percussion item. ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94QfODK9mYE 

Thulani and Madeleine said “What was good during the digital PåskePULSE is the good teaching methods we had. We mostly focused on activities that are easy to be done at home with or without the help of an adult. We had activities such as body percussion, singing, dancing, and drawing. The teaching method we used was mostly body language, call and respond with back up tracks, it worked very well to keep the energy level of the kids high. We received daily feedback from the kids and that helped us to improve on how we deliver the content.

It did not go without its challenges, a challenge we uncounted mostly was about sound delays because of the network. It was difficult to communicate or let all the kids sing at the same time. We thought it will be best to create a backup track that they will sing, play, or dance to. We also created background sounds to stimulate their creativity while doing a task to avoid silence during the sessions. It was a great experience that will be fun to have again. Distance simply means separations in place, but never in connection as we manage to meet again and do what we love.” https://musikkorps.sharepoint.com/sites/PULSE-team/Delte%20dokumenter/General/Klipp%20fra%20P%C3%A5skePULSE.mov

Picture of Oliwia Cichocka

Drawing from Oliwia Cichocka saying thank you.

In addition to the daily sessions on Zoom, the participants were given a daily pack of activities to be done by the participants on their own at home and on their own time. The home activities were fun, easy, and required no expensive equipment to executed them. Activities included watching a film with dance choreography and dancing along with it, composing an Easter rap song. You can find the whole program here; https://musikkorps.no/musikalske-paskeaktiviteter/

Like any other FeriePULSE programs, digital PåskePULSE was open for children with and without banding experience. The aim is to have fun and create a healthy environment for the participants to socialize, meet friends, and making new friends while they are learning music through playing instruments, singing, and dancing. Another aim with digital PåskePULSE was to keep contact with participants from FeriePULSE programs in Molde, Oslo, and Bergen, with a special focus on participants without banding experience.

Musicians from NMFs member bands and children who previously attended FeriePULSE were invited to be part of the program. We had a total of 46 participants divided into three groups. 26 of these had previously participated in FeriePULSE, while 20 of them never had the experience of being part of FeriePULSE. 37 of the participants were band members and 9 of them did not have musical training. We had 39 different schools represented from different regions which included Oslo, Viken, Rogaland, Vestland (Bergen included), Møre and Romsdal (Molde included), Vestfold, Innlandet and Troms, and Finnmark.

The overall conclusion is that NMF would like to continue to explore digital platforms and PULSE is proud to announce that we will be part of developing a variety of activities and explore different methods for digital training.

pictures by: Ewa Cichoka

Written by: Jacob Mhlapeng